SR24 drivers find relief

Hanford commuters and truckers are finding life a little easier these days along State Route 24.

State highway workers this summer added passing lanes on both sides of a steep hill that clogged traffic for trucks hauling apples, wheat and hay, as well as Hanford workers on their way from Sunnyside and Yakima to work.

"It's just going to be a big relief for them," said Robin Robert of Robert and Sons Ranch, whose family business hauls alfalfa along the road.

Drivers began using the passing lanes in late July, but the state Department of Transportation today will officially dedicate the four miles of widened road with a ribbon cutting. Transportation officials, area farmers and Hanford representatives will meet at 10:30 a.m. at the Silver Dollar Tavern near the intersection of State Route 241.

The improved stretch of road runs from the intersection east to Cold Creek Road. During weekends or midday, it can look like a dusty, desolate highway with few cars.

But early weekday mornings, it's a major commuting route for Hanford workers and trucking route for vineyards, orchards and ranches in the area. It sees 4,500 vehicles a day, about 21 percent of them trucks, said assistant project engineer Bob Hooker.

"That is one busy commute," he said.

All that congestion made it dangerous, too. That stretch of road was home to five accidents in as many years, three of them fatal. All were at least partly caused by drivers trying to pass when there wasn't enough room, Hooker said.

Transportation workers began the project in mid-March and finished ahead of schedule and on their $5.1 million budget. It was funded by the 2005 statewide 9.5-cent gas tax increase.

During construction, road crews opened the highway between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. every weekday.

The improvements are welcome news to the locals, too.

Robert and Sons Ranch lies just south of the intersection along 241, but his family often hauls hay to a cattle ranch near the top of the ridge along 24. Trucks often had to pull over on the shoulder to let the faster cars by, Robin Robert said.

Robert has witnessed several road improvements in the area. The Department of Transportation recently widened portions of 241 between the Silver Dollar and Sunnyside. He also remembers when the state built the Vernita Bridge further east along 24. Before that, drivers crossed the Columbia River by ferry.

"They've been making it a lot safer here lately," he says.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

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