Tacoma transition begins final piece of I-5 construction
Mar 21, 2019, 9:43 AM
The Tacoma Dome. (File, MyNorthwest)
(File, MyNorthwest)
Tacoma drivers have dealt with a never-ending series of lane changes and movement on I-5 as the state adds HOV lanes to the freeway. Only one major shift is left before the project is complete.
You might have noticed that some of the I-5 lanes have moved a little bit this week. They have been shifted to the outside of the freeway to allow the third and final overpass to be torn-down in Tacoma.
“We’ve shifted them out slightly because there’s no work taking place in the center median,” Washington Department of Transportation’s Cara Mitchell said.
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The East L Street overpass — like the Portland Avenue and McKinley Avenue overpasses before it — needs to come down so the state can add HOV lanes through the city.
“What we have to do is take the old bridges out, widen the area on either side of the freeway so we can add additional lanes, and then we rebuild the overpass so that those new bridge piers aren’t in the way of future lanes,” Mitchell said.
The overpass will start coming-down on Monday. In April, drivers will have to endure some overnight closures as the demolition continues. The biggest impact will be on April 12 and April 13, when I-5 will be reduced to a single lane as the sections over the freeway come down.
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Then it will be the last big traffic shift, moving all southbound I-5 traffic into the northbound lanes of the freeway, over the Puyallup River.
“We will be moving three lanes of southbound I-5 onto the new northbound Puyallup River Bridge,” Mitchell said.
It will take just under three years to build the new southbound bridge and the new L Street overpass, and southbound drivers will remain in the northbound lanes for the duration. Mitchell said the state didn’t want to make a bunch of small traffic shifts, recognizing that Tacoma drivers have suffered enough.
It looks like about three more years of pain through Tacoma before the construction that’s been going-on — nearly nonstop for 25 years — will be complete. The target date is sometime in 2021.
That’s about the same time that some of the I-5 widening project through JBLM should wrap up, but the piece from the Main Gate through Steilacoom-DuPont Road won’t be finished until 2025.
