MUKILTEO, Wash. -- When it comes to car travel, the busiest ferry route in the state isn't a Seattle run -- it's the Mukilteo-Clinton run to and from Whidbey Island.
But the tiny Mukilteo terminal was never designed to handle the 2.5 million vehicles it sees every year. And neither was the Mukilteo Speedway -- the only road to and from the ferry dock. Traffic backups create what local residents call the “bar of steel” that cuts the community in two. All along the Mukilteo Speedway there are funky workarounds to facilitate traffic flow.
There are signs directing motorists who want to make a turn into town to cross directly in front of ferry traffic lined up along the speedway. It’s a recipe for confusion and collisions.
“It’s gotten kind of overworked. Time for a change,” said Mukilteo resident Dennis Gillingham.
Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine agrees. The change Marine wants is to move the ferry terminal to the northeast end of an abandoned tank farm where the Air Force once stored jet fuel.
"For years our community stared at these twenty-foot tanks that just sat out here,” Marine said. “I mean this is our opportunity to fix the problem that we have with ferry traffic and at the same time, get that public access to the beach that we desire," he said.
That plan, called “Elliot Point 1” is just one of four options the Washington State Department of Transportation is considering. It’s also the most expensive with a price tag of about $160 million. That’s nearly three times what it would cost to replacing the existing dock without making improvements.
Mukilteo City Council members Kevin Stoltz and Steve Schmalz oppose the $160 million plan.
"The state doesn't have that,” Stoltz said, “and I don't know why we keep thinking that as long as it's somebody else's money, it's miraculously going to appear.”
It's true the state ferry system is broke -- with a $1.3 billion budget deficit projected over the next decade. But critics say lawmakers and WSDOT have no one to blame but themselves for the Mukilteo mess.
Mayor Marine has a study that was commissioned in 1969 to evaluate what should be done to improve traffic flow and handle increased traffic volumes on the ferry run.
Published in 1972, the 40-year-old study recommended WSDOT move the ferry dock to the end of the tank farm.
"It's a metaphor for, 'Let's talk about it some more, let's study it some more, but really never solve the issue,'” Marine said.
Instead of acting on that 1972 study, WSDOT commissioned two more studies.
What did all that cost? To date, $24.4 million in studies, with no work done on a new dock.
“I happen to think that it's financially irresponsible to spend $25 million and really have nothing to show for it," Councilman Steve Schmalz said.
Emergency band aids have kept the dock operating. But the ferry officials concede it will have to be torn down soon, with or without a decision on its replacement.
WSDOT is holding two hearings this week, one in Mukilteo on Wednesday and one in Clinton on Thursday, to get input on the four options under consideration for the so called “Mukilteo Multimodal Project.”
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