County to improve signs for Southworth-bound drivers

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 18, 2026

King County plans to modify signs and provide other visual cues on the northernmost stretch of Vashon Highway Southwest to deter drivers bound for the Southworth ferry from making a potentially dangerous mistake.

The changes are “a big win,” says islander Vicky de Monterey Richoux, who alerted the county’s Road Services Division to the situation in January.

It’s “a head-on collision waiting to happen,” she says.

Here’s the problem: Signs direct Southworth-bound motorists to turn left off Vashon Highway onto 103rd Avenue Southwest and follow it down the hill to the dock.

Some don’t.

Some inattentive or confused drivers miss the signs directing them to 103rd. They keep cruising down the Highway. And when they reach the flashing yellow light at Southwest 112th Street, where the northbound lane of the Highway becomes a holding lane for Fauntleroy-bound vehicles that’s often filled with parked cars, some cross the double yellow line and continue north in the Highway’s southbound lanes.

They drive down the wrong side of the road toward the ferry, into oncoming traffic.

De Monterey Richoux has seen it many times while waiting in the Fauntleroy line. She suspects most of the miscreants are visitors to Vashon or commercial drivers.

“It’s dreadful … “ she said in an email. “What if a ferry was unloading at that moment, with the first motorcycles racing up the hill? Or between ferry unloads, someone who had just picked up a [ferry] passenger at the corner could be driving south toward uptown.”

That worst-case scenario hasn’t happened, at least not in the last 10 years. King County Road Services reports that, while 13 collisions have occurred on the Highway between 112th and the dock since 2016, none has involved a northbound vehicle hitting a southbound vehicle in the southbound lanes.

But islanders have been concerned about the possibility for a long time. Road Services says it received 13 communications about the issue between 2018 and 2022, then none until de Monterey Richoux sent an email Jan. 26.

She pasted to her email a screenshot of a social media post, apparently from an islander, asking whether Southworth-bound drivers should wait in the same line as Fauntleroy-bound vehicles, or “drive around.”

On Feb. 18, Road Services replied, promising action. “The county takes seriously the experience you described … “ Keith Brown, traffic operations supervisor, wrote.

Most of the planned improvements are at or near the intersection of Vashon Highway and 112th. Two green signs — one on the Highway about 600 feet before that intersection, the other right at the junction — now direct bicycle, motorcycle and pickup/dropoff ferry traffic to turn left onto 112th.

Drivers bound for the Southworth ferry who have missed the first turn off Vashon Highway onto 103rd at the top of the hill also can turn left onto 112th, then right onto 103rd to reach the dock — but the signs don’t say so now.

The county roads department plans to remedy that. A “Southworth” plaque will be added to both signs “for improved clarity,” Brown said.

Also planned: A flashing beacon on the sign at the intersection, and plastic pylons on the highway’s double-yellow centerline for a short distance north of 112th. The pylons will “visually highlight” the line, Brown wrote, “… reinforcing its presence.”

Finally, uphill and to the south, the first of two signs on northbound Vashon Highway informing Southworth-bound drivers to turn left onto 103rd will be modified to alert motorists that the turn is one-quarter mile ahead — “to better prepare drivers,” Brown said.

The sign changes should happen soon, county spokesperson Brent Champaco said last week in an email. The pylons probably won’t be installed until the weather is warmer and drier so the adhesive can bond with the pavement, he added.

But all the planned improvements may not change the behavior of any Southworth-bound motorists who pay more attention to their GPS navigation apps than they do to road signs.

In multiple searches for directions from locations in Vashon Town, Burton and Maury Island to “Vashon Island Ferry Terminal,” both Google Maps and Apple Maps suggested routes following Vashon Highway all the way to the dock.

Even when “Southworth” was entered as the destination, the apps led travelers down the Highway, rather than onto 103rd, in most searches.

The county can’t do much about that, Champaco wrote.

“Navigation apps are operated by private companies, and King County Road Services does not have direct control or input over how routes are displayed in those systems,” he said. “Our focus is on providing clear roadway signage and pavement markings to help guide drivers approaching the ferry terminals.”

In a related development, the county also is now recommending that motorists drop off and pick up ferry foot passengers at the Park and Ride lot on 103rd — not on 103rd near the foot of the dock.

A new sign directing drop-off/pick-up traffic into the parking lot has recently been installed on 103rd near the lot’s entrance.

The Road Services Division made the change after receiving an email last fall from islander Laura Cerven, who described her experience waiting on 103rd to board a ferry to Southworth on a Sunday last September.

She was at the end of a line of nine cars waiting on 103rd, she wrote. By asking, she learned that, of the first seven vehicles, five were waiting to pick up walk-on passengers. Two, inexplicably, were waiting for a Fauntleroy boat.

Cerven said she ended up missing her boat because she couldn’t see around the corner to the dock, and none of the cars ahead of her moved.

What’s more, she wrote, it’s unsafe for Southworth-bound vehicles to drive around other vehicles on 103rd in the lane used by oncoming traffic.

“Drop-off/pick-up traffic and Southworth-bound traffic should be separate,” Cerven wrote.

Eric Pryne is a retired Seattle Times journalist whose many beats included transportation.