The in basket: Forrest Butler of Kingston thinks I should
revisit the reason that both the southbound and northbound lanes of
Highway 3 just north of Luoto Road jog slightly sideways.
“Were the engineers responsible
for each section too stubborn to admit one or the other was
off in their calculations?” he asked, before I sent him the real
reason.
The in basket: Forrest Butler of Kingston thinks I should revisit
the reason that both the southbound and northbound lanes of Highway
3 just north of Luoto Road jog slightly sideways.
“Were the engineers responsible
for each section too stubborn to admit one or the other was
off in their calculations?” he asked, before I sent him the real
reason.
The out basket: I haven’t discussed this since 2003, when Bill
Couch asked about it and I discovered all kinds of readers had
noticed it and had their speculations about its cause. Many were of
the same “somebody goofed” frame of mind as Forrest.
I had never noticed the jog until Bill pointed it out.
Anyway, I got the explanation from past state project engineer Mel
Holgerson, who was overseeing local highway work about that
time.
The freeway up to Luoto was completed a few years before it was
extended north of there. The federal government was lavishing all
kinds of Trident impact money on the area during construction of
the southern portion. When it came time to push the freeway north
to Poulsbo, money was tighter.
So, Mel told me, the designers made the freeway narrower to save
money on the bridges that would cross it at Sherman Hill and Finn
Hill roads, and to reduce the amount of earth that had to be moved.
The jog adjusted for the lesser width of the median to the
north.
