FIFE, Wash. — This weekend in western Washington has been dubbed the "monster weekend" of road closures by state transportation leaders.
One of those weekend closures will be in between Federal Way and Fife on I-5, near the Fife curve, for work on the SR 167 Completion Project.
The Washington State Department of Transportation said both directions of I-5 between SR 18 in Federal Way and 54th Avenue East in Fife will be closed overnight Friday, Sept. 27 and Saturday, Sept. 28.
Lanes of I-5 in both directions will begin closing at 7 p.m. both Friday and Saturday night. All northbound lanes are closed by 10:30 p.m. and all southbound lanes by 11 p.m.
On Saturday, lanes on I-5 will begin reopening at 7 a.m., and all lanes are scheduled to reopen by 11 a.m.
On Sunday, WSDOT said lanes will begin reopening at 8 a.m., and that all lanes of I-5 will reopen by noon.
“We're building a brand-new highway from scratch with a lot of this, so there's a lot of infrastructure that has to go in,” said Kris Olsen, a spokesperson for WSDOT.
The closure in Fife is due to work on the SR 167 Completion Project.
This weekend WSDOT said crews will be demolishing the old 70th Avenue East Bridge in Fife that runs over I-5 and will start setting girders for a new bridge that will be built near the one being torn down.
WSDOT said over the next four weeks, 15 girders will be set for the new bridge. Each girder is more than 222 feet long and 277,000 pounds each.
“The girders we're setting are the second longest precast concrete girders in the world. They are huge,” said Olsen.
The SR 167 Completion Project will create six miles of new highway to create an expressway to connect the Port of Tacoma to the Puyallup area to help with freight.
“The 167 Expressway is going to give a lot of those freight trucks a direct route between the manufacturing centers in East Pierce and King Counties to the port,” said Olsen.
She said not only will truck drivers benefit, but commuters will benefit as well as big trucks will no longer have to make their way through city streets near Fife.
“Anybody who's driving down there and they've tried to make a left-hand turn in some of those areas, it can take a while because you're just waiting for trucks,” said Olsen.
In addition to the I-5 closures near Fife happening this weekend, there will be similar I-5 closures the following three weekends in the same area to finish work on the new bridge.
The portion of the SR 167 Completion Project that goes from the Port of Tacoma to I-5 is set to be complete in 2026. The entire project connecting down to the Puyallup area is expected to be complete in 2029.