Benson Road near Renton City Hall to close tonight for offramp work

By Dean Radford • July 12, 2010 6:39 pm
The steel and concrete from the old Benson Road bridge is being sorted at the former Stoneway concrete plant on the Maple Valley Highway. The steel and concrete will be recycled.
The steel and concrete from the old Benson Road bridge is being sorted at the former Stoneway concrete plant on the Maple Valley Highway. The steel and concrete will be recycled.

The project to widen Interstate 405 will bring yet another closure tonight and Tuesday to Renton.

Benson Road near City Hall will close from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. both nights so that workers can place the girders for a new I-405 offramp to Talbot Road South. The suggested detour is Talbot Road South at Grady Way.

The Benson Road was realigned to the east to make room for the new offramp, which will go over Benson.

The Benson closure follows the full closure of I-405 last weekend to tear down the old Benson Road bridge over the freeway.

The remains of that bridge are being sorted at the former Stoneway concrete plant on the Maple Valley Highway south of the Renton Community Center. The steel, concrete and wood from the old bridge are all being recycled.

The concrete next will go to Renton Concrete Recycling, which is owned by Gary Merlino Construction, one of the main contractors on the nearly $84 million freeway project.

The freeway closure brought heavy traffic to downtown Renton on Saturday. Sunday’s traffic was affected minimally because the freeway reopened at about 8 a.m., three hours earlier than scheduled.

Rich Perteet, the City of Renton deputy public works director for transportation, and other city workers were out Saturday to monitor the movement of traffic through downtown Renton on designated detours.

The city is putting together statistics how many vehicles detoured through the city, based on normal traffic loads.

Hard-hit by the extra traffic was Grady Way. “That was the worst of it,” said Perteet.

Northbound State Route 167 backed up toward Kent because of the extra burden on its intersection with Grady Way, where SR 167 becomes Rainier Avenue. That backup was expected, Perteet said.

City staff made adjustments to the timing of traffic signals as the day wore on.

Perteet watched traffic early Saturday afternoon at the intersection of Park and Garden avenues near I-405, which saw heavy loads as people tried to get to Coulon Park to cool off in Lake Washington. The timing of that signal was “tweaked,” he said.