The proposed Sunset interchange project would include a 1.5-mile stretch of road designed to relieve Downtown traffic. Current counts place about 20,000 cars each day clogging the main North-South arterial, Front Street.

City officials are pinning their hopes on the project as a way out of its serious traffic snarls because until the traffic issues can be resolved, further development in the area will be severely restricted. Darkening the cloud passing over the proposed project are the objections of environmentalists concerned with the stretch of wetlands that would need to be crossed by the bypass to link Issaquah-Hobart Road to Interstate 90.

The situation is such that one city employee told GlobeSt.com the outlook for the project is not good. "It's looking like the bypass won't get the go-ahead," says the source speaking on anonymity. "And that's a real problem for the traffic—all the projections we're using now make the assumption that bypass gets built."

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