There is a connection between the I-5 closures on Friday and Saturday nights to install new bridge girders, and two big sections of the region’s highway system that were never completed.
If you’ve always wondered why the divided highway that is SR 167 just seems to end in Puyallup, and why SR 509 fades away into 188th at the south end of Sea-Tac International Airport, you will only have to wait until 2028 until you can finally drive on the vision transportation planners had some 60 years ago for the Seattle-Tacoma metro area.
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is working to complete those 'mystery' projects now.
The bridge being installed over I-5 at what they call the "Fife Curves," is a major link in completing that system. But what is getting built is more than just a bridge.
“This was back in the late 1950s, when I-5, 405 and 167 -- a lot of the routes in and around Puget Sound -- were planned,” says Steve Fuchs, program manager for the WSDOT "Gateway Project." But Fuchs says the money to finish SR 167, in particular, ran out in the late 1980s, so the road terminated with an interchange at Meridian Street.
When complete, SR 509 will curve south of Sea-Tac Airport and flow onto I-5 at Des Moines, with additional lanes to accommodate more traffic. SR 167 will connect to I-5 at the 70th Street bridge, which will become four lanes, replacing a two-lane bridge now in use. The new bridge is larger and more direct, in part to handle a lot of the truck traffic between the Port of Tacoma and the huge warehousing center in the Kent Valley, considered one of the largest in the country.
The roads will be tolled, and the cost of construction is estimated by WSDOT at around $2 billion.
