'We just stay home now': Marysville drivers fed up with the SnoCo Squeeze



MARYSVILLE, Wash. -- Drivers are getting fed up with the "SnoCo Squeeze."

“There really is no way around it,” Joshua Wilson said Friday night.

“If you even try to divert to take the side streets, forget it. It's just a nightmare coming through,” adds Jodi Condyles.

Once again this weekend, WSDOT is closing several traffic lanes on northbound Interstate 5, so they can replace aging expansion joints. Drivers say the project has been going on for a while.

“It feels like maybe a month to six weeks,” says Condyles.

Engineers say they’ve been trying to minimize the impact on drivers. That’s why they’ve been scheduling work on the weekends. But they know there are still a lot of people driving to and through Snohomish County on the weekends.

“We've seen backups of up to about 5 miles over these weekend closures,” says Annie Johnson, WSDOT spokesperson. “So you want to give yourself plenty of extra time.”

Many drivers tell us the extra time sitting in traffic just isn’t worth it anymore.

“Going south from Marysville, you're not going to want to do that. Because you're just going to have to come back home,” says Wilson.

“We just choose not to go anywhere anymore, especially on the weekends,” Condyles adds. “We just stay home now.”

They’re hoping that WSDOT can wrap up the construction in the next few weekends, so traffic will be moving again in June.

“It would be nice because we're very busy during Strawberry Festival time, we get a lot of visitors, a lot of people coming in from out of town,” says Condyles. “I do hope they arrange it so that they're done, but I don't hold out hope for that.”

WSDOT says they’re on track to finish the project by June 16.