WSDOT Completed These Washington Projects This Summer

If you drove basically anywhere in Washington this summer, you had to deal with orange cones and work zones.

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Most of those projects were major construction work zones or the day-to-day work of WSDOT’s maintenance crews. Their goal this summer was simple but massive: keep highways, bridges, tunnels, overpasses, and rest areas safe and reliable.

Washington State Summer Maintenance Looked Like This

It was not just fixing potholes; maintenance work covers everything from repairing pavement and bridges to keeping electronic highway signs working. Between June 1 and August 31, crews finished this long list of Washington State projects.

Repaired 1.8 million square feet of pavement
Patched nearly 10,000 square feet of potholes
Painted more than 11,500 lane miles of road stripes
Installed 125,000 pavement reflectors along I-5 from King County to the Canadian border
Mowed and cleared 16,942 miles of roadside, keeping sightlines clear and invasive plants in check

On top of that, WSDOT removed nearly 1,200 hazardous trees, swept almost 3,800 miles of roadway, and cleaned up 335 tons of trash.

Washington State Rest Areas and Roadside Safety

WSDOT also maintains 47 safety rest areas across the state. They are responsible for everything from plumbing repairs to graffiti removal and even restocking toilet paper.

Over the summer, crews dispensed 3,000 miles’ worth of TP and logged in more than 40,000 hours keeping rest areas clean and open.

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WSDOT is made up of almost 1,500 maintenance workers from all parts of Washington State, like Othello to Port Orchard, Chehalis to Pullman. They maintain 18,700 lane miles of highway, 3,400 bridges, 1,200 traffic signals, and nearly 100,000 acres of rights of way.

Much of this work is invisible to YOU, but without it, the system would not run at all.