Unfortunately, the writer of the recently published letter complaining about traffic congestion exiting southbound I-5 onto South 320th Street is too focused on their own particular experience. The congestion problem in that area is far bigger and also includes vehicles coming up from Peasley Canyon and exiting from northbound I-5.

I usually avoid this area like the proverbial plague, but several weeks ago I gave it a try. Silly me thought that, at 3 p.m., I might beat the rush. Fortunately I was paying attention, because traffic exiting from northbound I-5 was backed up on the shoulder halfway back to the Weyerhaeuser headquarters. It took over 45 minutes just to get onto South 320th Street. The problem was that only two or three cars were making the left turn on each cycle of the light. When I did finally get onto 320th I expected to see an accident or a traffic signal out of order, but instead it was simply too many vehicles in the same place at the same time.

No tweaking of traffic lights can fix the problem when the road is simply over capacity. It’s hard to imagine how much worse this will get when the new bus barn apartments reach full occupancy. Several years ago the city staff, to their credit, saw this issue coming and developed plans to better distribute traffic over multiple arterials and presented the options to the community. Sadly, our city leaders at the time caved to pressure from a single neighborhood, leaving the rest of us with the mess we have today.

Perhaps it’s time to resurrect those plans? Maybe our current city leadership could hitch up their drawers and make it happen? It would take years to complete, but what other solution is there to an over-capacity road?

Oops, I forgot: That will never happen. It’s an election year.

Richard Wetjen, Federal Way