Auburn Way South from the Muckleshoot Plaza to Dogwood Street Southeast is a five-lane road, with left turn lanes, concrete, curbs, gutters and sidewalks, and multiple driveways for entering and leaving businesses and residences.

And – no earth-shattering news to anyone who’s been there – it’s a busy, busy place, burdened by December of 2015 with an average traffic count of 31,000 vehicles a day.

Between January 2010 and May 2015, City records show, there were 182 reported accidents in the area.

Indeed, the area lays claim to having the city intersection with the highest accident rate, Riverwalk Drive.

But by widening Auburn Way South, as the City intends to start doing this fall, traffic engineers say there’ll be room for bus pull-out areas, for a second eastbound left turn into the Muckleshoot Casino’s main entrance at Riverwalk Drive, and for raised, landscaped medians.

And as plans for what is formally called the Auburn Way South Corridor Safety Improvements project show, there’ll be new, 10-foot-wide sidewalks, better street lighting and upgraded traffic signals.

On Monday the Auburn City Council got a general overview and project update from the team putting it all together, an overview that included talk of the status of environmental permitting, right-of-way acquisition and scheduling.

Project Manager Matt Larson said what is to be the City’s biggest road project of late 2016 is in fact a continuation to the west of a project completed this spring on Auburn Way South.

The overall idea, Larson said, is to enhance vehicle and pedestrian safety and ease congestion along the corridor.

The project lists improvements to the existing storm drainage system to accommodate the wider roadway, replacement of an old water main, and incorporating streetscape techniques to improve the way the corridor looks that are to include planting in the raised medians and the installation of street trees.

“Our plan is to advertise for bids this August, which means we’ll begin construction in late September or early October. That’s a little bit up in the air only because we are currently in the right-of-way phase, and right-of-way acquisition can be a little bit out of our hands as far as scheduling is concerned,” Larson said.

It is, Larson added, a federally-grant-funded project with money channeled through the Washington State Department of Transportation. Larson said WSDOT will provide additional money for pavement overlay, and there’ll be additional City funds to pay for for the replacement of water mains.

“We are currently showing a $600,000 shortfall, so we are pursuing additional state and federal funds and are in discussions with the Muckleshoot Tribe about providing funding for it,” Larson said.

Access management strategies are to include consolidating, eliminating, and/or restricting direction of travel in and out of non-signalized driveways, constructing raised medians, c-curbing, and providing U-turns at the Dogwood and MIT Plaza signals.