Holiday shoppers' traffic tricks

You didn't hear this from us, OK?

Seriously. We kinda-sorta promised not to wreck things for all the locals already stressed over holiday traffic jams. The backups along the freeway shoulders near exits for major malls; the bumper-to-bumper vehicles stretching for blocks around primo shopping destinations.

While it's not possible to totally avoid the holiday traffic morass, tricks and detours do exist. But they're closely guarded.

"If I tell you, I'll have a target on me," said Dick Adams, Lynnwood's city engineer. "You know the citizens who live on those back roads don't like us to tell you about them."

Lynnwood's Alderwood mall and Seattle Premium Outlets on the Tulalip Reservation cause the worst snarls, in part because neither lies directly off Interstate 5. The Everett Mall is easier to reach from the freeway, but few alternative routes exist to ease the traffic crunch.

Perhaps the wisest shoppers are those who don't even try to second-guess the holiday crowds.

Liz Seymour, of Bothell, said she has given up on Alderwood. In the past, she exited Interstate 405 at Alderwood Mall Parkway, which on paper looks like a clean shot to the mall. It's not.

"It's just ridiculous," she said. "Even when you try to get out of the mall, everything gets backed up. I tend to not bother. I just don't go."

Her alternatives?

"I do my shopping early," said Seymour, who ventured to the Tulalip mall the day before Thanksgiving. "Or else I do a lot of online stuff. The wear and tear on your nerves is just not worth it."

Mark Morin, of Mountlake Terrace, also slipped in some pre-Thanksgiving shopping. Don't expect to see him at area malls during the December fray.

"I shopped a lot online last year," said Morin, an engineer. "All the traffic jams were the UPS trucks getting to my house."

Alderwood

Shoppers headed for Alderwood should accept inevitable delays, even if they know alternate routes, Adams said.

"It's such an attraction, there's no slick way to get there without congestion," he said.

Alderwood doesn't try to track its customer base over the holidays — it's impossible not to double-count visitors as they flow between indoor shops, the outdoor village-style corridor and the movie complex, said Peter Cho, in guest services.

"It was crazy on Black Friday," he said. "All the roads were packed."

Insiders tend to avoid 196th Street Southwest and Alderwood Mall Parkway, the city's obvious access points from Interstate 5, and instead use city streets to approach the mall from the north, west or south. Several routes exist from the north via 164th Street Southwest, and by exiting I-5 at 44th Avenue West from the south.

One old favorite — Ash Way south from 164th to Maple Road, which jogs into Alderwood Mall Parkway — is too well-known and jammed to still recommend, some say. But habits die hard.

"I've gone that way since I was a kid, so I always go that way," said Rosie Bender, of Marysville.

Lisa Utter, a Lynnwood councilwoman, lives on a road accessed off 188th Street Southwest — the most direct route into Alderwood's parking garages.

"Every Saturday, it's hard to even get out," said Utter, who accepts traffic as "part of living in the urban center."

Her neighbor works at Fred Meyer at Lynnwood's traffic bull's-eye of 196th and 44th.

"It's like four blocks from here. He said it takes him quite a while to get out of the Fred Meyer parking lot to 194th, which isn't even the main street," she said.

"He could have walked faster — as I reminded him."

Everett Mall

Everett offers simple advice for residents headed to Everett Mall: Stick to city streets and leave I-5 to the out-of-towners.

"It's kind of obvious," quipped one city staffer. "We don't want people from Lynnwood and Marysville clogging up our city streets."

No-nonsense shoppers favor Everett Mall for its compact layout and relative ease of parking. It satisfies the basics, without trying to compete with Alderwood or the Tulalip mall as a regional destination.

But during the holiday crush, virtually all traffic must use Everett Mall Way, which runs between I-5 and Evergreen Way, or Highway 99. Traffic backs up to the east across the I-5 overpass, a complex juncture between the Boeing Freeway, the Bothell-Everett Highway, Everett Mall Way and various freeway ramps.

Beverly Boulevard and Old Broadway, used by some locals to reach the mall from the north, also funnel into that web of stoplights and backups.

The best shortcuts are from the south, driving up Fourth or Seventh avenues southeast, accessed via 112th or 128th streets southeast.

Seattle Premium Outlets

This is the Tulalip mall's second holiday season. Serious shoppers — and innocent drivers caught in the backwash — say hands-down it generates the worst slowdowns on I-5 and surrounding interchanges.

The outlet mall's 100-plus mostly upscale stores draw millions of customers from as far away as Canada. The two obvious freeway access points — 116th and 88th streets northeast — lie on each end of a long, skinny commercial strip that includes a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot and the tribes' casino. Locals trying to reach the mall from State Avenue and other points east of I-5 are siphoned into the same interchanges.

"It's bad," said Katrisha Ellingson, 19, an Easy Spirit shoes sales clerk. "Trying to get over 116th, on a holiday or a weekend, can take you 45 minutes."

"I came to the mall around midnight last year for the [Thanksgiving night] opening of Midnight Madness," said Stephanie Sutherland, 22, of Marysville. "There was a backup literally a mile long."

The best alternatives: cross I-5 north of the mall at 136th Street Northeast and cut south on local arterials, or exit I-5 at Fourth Street, in Marysville's south end, and take 27th Avenue Northeast north through the reservation.

Mall spokeswoman Michele Rothstein says the traffic flow is pretty good compared with similar commercial centers elsewhere in the U.S. Snohomish County shoppers "have never had such a large destination shopping center," she said. "They aren't used to queuing up to get off the highway."

Her advice? Come early or shop late; eat dinner at the mall before joining the crowd headed for the exits.

"If everyone comes at 11 and leaves at 4, that's when they're going to get caught in that traffic crunch," she said.

Diane Brooks: 425-745-7802 or dbrooks@seattletimes.com