Driving On WA SR-520 East In 1983 (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond)
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- čas přidán 20. 01. 2023
- Back in 1983, The Washington State Department of Transportation drove East on SR-520 and recorded video to document the highway. This was part of a project that photographed/videotaped the states highways every couple of years. This video now resides at The Washington State Archives who were kind enough to share it.
When we pine for the past via a soundless traffic video - it shows how much better many or most of us fee things were forty years ago.
This is the Seattle of my dreams, love this video.
I remember this route from when I was a kid. And I drove it again today. It's totally different! Especially the last few seconds showing where Redmond Town Center is now.
It used to be the Redmond golf course.. I played there on and off.
I drove a cab in Bellevue when 520 stopped at 148th. When they did put it through to Redmond that stoplight at NE 51st St. was there for close to a year then vanished.
So weird to see an intersection with a stoplight on 520 before the W Lk Sammamish exit. Oh what a difference 40 years has made.
Any idea what that cross street at the stoplight would have been? I can't quite visualize it. 😞
@@friendlyfff2155 51st street?
@@friendlyfff2155 Ne 51st Street.
Love watching stuff like this. Not sure why even.
You’re not alone!
Fun fact. Probably 10% of the drivers and passengers in those cars were wearing seatbelts. 520 used to end at 148th street. If you look on the side of 520 after passing 148th street you will notice the asphalt is brand new and the overpasses are brand new. I think the extension of 520 opened in 1981/82.
That bridge was a part of my childhood and young adulthood and have gone across it countless times, it now sits in pieces on the banks of the Pitt River in Vancouver BC.
This must have been taken during the morning rush and it still looks relaxed. While I do miss the slower pace of life I’m grateful that I can bike along the trail that now runs along the entire highway and the new bridge. I didn’t even know 520 had stoplights in Bellevue.
The NE 51st stoplight is in Redmond.
The cars were so tiny back then. We practically drive houses on wheels now in comparison.
All that sardonic l safety tech. Plus people are generally bigger now.
Might not look the same if this had been 1973. But the "compact" car had become popular by the early 80's.
Wish safety standards accommodated for exempting small cars and trucks.
Looking for new cars nowadays feels like figuring out how I’m going to Tetris it down my neighborhoods small streets. I’d far prefer a smaller one like the ones from the 80s
I grew up near 520 on the Eastside. This video makes me wonder, what were my family members doing on this particular day, 10-18-83, at this moment? This was a Tuesday, so I was at the junior high school in an 8th grade class.
I would have been sitting in my 6th grade class at Emily Dickenson on Union Hill Rd.
The feelings I get watching these videos is impossible to explain. I moved up to Whatcom County in 1993, but I've been down to Redmond a handful of times since. I'm so grateful for this kind of footage that has captured my childhood.
My grandparents lived off Avondale over in Cottage Lake. I had almost forgotten what that whole area had looked like before all of the highway improvements, Microsoft campus, Marymoor changes. I wish the video had continued onto Avondale a ways.
You would not recognize downtown Redmond today.
@@edwardmoulaison1359 I would be at Margaret Mead and then Evergreen Jr. the very next year.
Love these vids. All the classic box sedans that have mostly gone away. I will watch all of these
This needs an edit with some 80's new wave music playing over it. 🔥💯
I like it. I could have been in any one of those cars passing by. Would be cool if you could dub in a local radio station from the same time.
Wow. And look at the road quality! Common WSDOT!
Sigh... I lived on Capitol Hill two blocks from Volunteer Park in Seattle when this was shot. I was there from 1976 to 1985 when I was in my twenties. And idyllic place for me in those times - totally tragic what Seattle became...
This is a great video! A few things I notice:
(1) 8:42: It looks like the exit from southbound 405 to eastbound 520 was a cloverleaf that enters eastbound 520 here. But where does traffic exiting from Northbound 405 enter eastbound 520? I don't see any exit ramp merging in.
(2) 12:25: Is that 40th Street? I note there is no interchange with 520 here.
(3) 13:09: Wow! No intercange at 51st St; it's an at-grade intersection.
(4) 14:54: I had heard that Redmond Towne Center was once a golf course .. .and there it is!
(5) 15:00: I was sad that the video ended here; I would have liked to have seen it keep going.
(1) If memory serves northbound 405 merged into the same ramp that southbound 405 did to enter eastbound 520.
(2) Yes it looks like it!
(5) There is a Highway 202 video that continues eastward on the channel, too czcams.com/video/QP2VCeiYs24/video.html
It was a figure 8 where the clover leaf entering 405 north from 520 was. The exit from 405 to 520 was the other side of the 8 directly southeast from it. The exit still still exists today but they have two lanes and a flyover kind of bridge from 405 to 520 east. The big flyover bridge from 520 to 405 north was built sometime around 2000. That's when the clover leaf disappeared.
When you enter the clover leaf from 520 to 405, directly to your left when turning was the exit/ramp to 520 east.
My gosh going down into Redmond - so pretty, so green. Now... not so much. Microsoft ruined the place in so many ways.
No homeless camps or graffiti. Traffic was a lot lighter back then.
Blinkers an option back then
Solid proof that nobody has ever used turn signals in the PNW!
Back when people knew how to drive and you definitely didn’t want to breakdown on the bridge especially during rush hour
Was Microsoft in Redmond by then?
Likely very little Tech Sprawl then. Microsoft "campus" an open grassy field....Redmond still had its old fashioned spread out "downtown"...
They were in Bellevue until 1986 iirc.
I would be at Evergreen Jr. High.