BLYN — Speed limits on U.S. Highway 101 near 7 Cedars Casino could drop to 50 mph by Thanksgiving, an official with the state Department of Transportation said.
The proposal is one of two speed reductions the department is considering for the main highway to, from and through Clallam County, said Steve Bennett, traffic operation engineer for the department’s Olympic Region.
“It would be safe to say it would be in place by Thanksgiving,” Bennett said.
“No guarantees, but that’s a fairly reasonable time frame.”
The other section is a two-lane stretch between Port Angeles and Sequim, but that section has not been reviewed and approved by State Patrol, he said.
Also, that section — from Shore Road to Kitchen-Dick Road, about three miles — is slated to be widened starting in 2009, so any reduction there may be temporary, he said.
The speed reduction in Blyn, stretching about 1½ miles from about Corriea Road to Chicken Coop Road would be permanent.
“We don’t have final approval yet, but we’re moving along those lines,” Bennett said.
So far, the State Patrol has signed off on the Blyn section.
“We thought that was reasonable,” said State Patrol Lt. Clint Casebolt.
All that is left is to get signatures from the department’s regional traffic engineer and the state traffic engineer.
The request for lowering the speed limit on that section originally came from the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, which owns the property near the curve in the highway at the bottom of Sequim Bay.
The request had been to lower the speed limit from 55 mph to 45 mph, but Bennett said that was unlikely.
“Forty-five is going to be a tough number to get people down to. Fifty is more realistic,” he said.
Speed limits are based on the speed of existing traffic, Bennett said.
The process for examining the speed limit of a particular piece of highway starts with a study.
