Northbound I-5 lanes reopen after 10 months of construction

Good evening, I'm David Rose, in for Frankie Thompson, and we begin with the end of Revive I-5 on one of the region's busiest stretches of freeway, at least for now. Boxer T's Jennifer Dowling is live along I-5 near the Ship Canal Bridge, where construction wrapped up within the last couple of hours. Jen? Good evening, David. As you can see, traffic is... This reopened tonight ahead of schedule. It was supposed to reopen tomorrow morning, and for those who live here and commute on this stretch of road, this is a big relief. They've had to take a lot of detours recently, and they're happy this is open once again. We were coming back on the freeway and then all of a sudden I said detour. Wing Lam and RJ Atwal say they were caught off guard by closures here this weekend. This weekend we ran into a Home Depot emergency. After hitting other detours on their shopping run to Home Depot, they realized they had one more hurdle as they approached the Ship Canal Bridge. It was a little bit of frustration, but it's fine. And then we come back here, last mile, we're almost home. We had food in the back, So it's like, this rap's closed as well. WSDOT says during this latest phase of Revive I-5, it's scheduled all northbound lanes between I-90 and Northeast 45th Street to close to allow crews to reconfigure lanes, pick up pinned barriers, and restripe the lanes and shoulders. From the walking perspective, it's actually entertaining seeing all the construction, how the areas change, and the new pedestrian sidewalks that they add. But I can imagine that it's a bit frustrating having to deal with it behind the wheel. WSDOT says the 60-year-old bridge had not had any maintenance work at this level in around 40 years. And this weekend's project should end most of the revived I-5 work for the year. Wing says the next time she plans to keep an eye on WSDOT's construction alerts. You know how the Instagram account has a lot of doodles? We're like, oh, yeah, it was closed. So that's how we checked after the fact. Work will start again here in early 2027 on the southbound lanes with the goal to finish the- The entire project by the end of next year. We come from L.A., so we're used to infrastructure projects that take forever and not accomplish anything. But at least here, we know that there's actual stuff getting done.