Buckle your seat belts, Tacoma. You'll need another half year of fortitude before you can drive Interstate 5 without passing through a construction zone.
After 20 years of shifting lanes, construction barriers, detours and overheated drivers, the $1.4 billion I-5 and state Route 16 high occupancy vehicle (HOV) project is now scheduled to open in summer 2022 in its entirety.
Until a few days ago, that opening was supposed to happen by the end of this year — an agreement both parties made last summer.
Late last week, the state Department of Transportation learned its contractor was going to need six more months to complete the project. Delays in getting building materials — pipes, concrete panels — ended any hope of a 2021 opening, according to WSDOT spokeswoman Cara Mitchell.
"This was compounded by subcontractor availability and weather," she said. "We now anticipate the new HOV lanes opening in summer 2022, which is still within the original project timeline."
Except for the final segment over the Puyallup River, the project is essentially complete. But the end has been a long time coming, and WSDOT knows that motorists are beyond frustrated.
"There's a generation of drivers who have never known I-5 through Tacoma without construction," said John Wynands, a WSDOT regional director.
"It's as sure a thing as Death and Taxes," Twitter user Chris Howard tweeted about the construction in September.
That new set of bridges over the Puyallup River is the last drivers will see of construction in Tacoma, Wynands said. The $235 million segment runs from the Port of Tacoma Road to Portland Avenue and is focused on southbound HOV lanes.
Some drivers have lost faith that the project will ever finish.
"I've given up completely on that stretch — I take the city center exit and go around," Twitter user Ty J Boo tweeted in September.
Demolition of the old Puyallup River bridges and roadways should be completed within a year, according to a schedule that WSDOT has coordinated with its contractor, Atkinson Construction. That work is largely independent of the nearby HOV lane construction.
With completion less than a year away, will drivers really get a construction-free Tacoma experience in 2022?
The glory days of I-5
Construction of what would become a nonstop roadway from the Mexican to Canadian borders began shortly after President Dwight Eisenhower's signing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The plan, dating from the 1940s, was to build a nationwide system of multi-lane roads free of intersections — the modern freeway.
The system was intended to improve safety and reduce congestion on city streets and highways. It would also aid commerce — a crucial factor in a port city.
Photographs from I-5's early days look almost too good to be true. Widely spaced vehicles drive on gleaming concrete through the South 56th Street cloverleaf. A 1961 photograph shows only cuts and soil ramparts where the future SR 16 would be built.
It was a road designed when cars had fins and Elvis Presley crooned from radios. By the time the first section of I-5 opened in Tacoma in 1960, the oldest Baby Boomers were just about to get their driver licenses.
At first, 21,000 vehicles a day used I-5. In the 60 years since, cars got smaller, then bigger again. Gas prices have soared and fallen more often than a roller coaster, and freight systems have been transformed.
Today, more than 200,000 vehicles per day travel the same route — a tenfold increase. In 1963, three lanes in each direction on I-5 carried traffic past the Port of Tacoma road interchange. By mid-2022, five lanes in each direction will carry traffic on the same route.
Even with the reach of Link light rail from Federal Way to Tacoma in 2030 and the eventual linkage of SR 167 and SR 509, will the newly expanded I-5 meet the demands placed on it?
When it's adding capacity, WSDOT strikes a balance between its resources and anticipated needs 20 years into the future, Wynands said.
"And so we don't overbuild things, but we build things so that you can expand without tearing things down," he said.
Car pool lanes
High-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lanes first arrived on I-5 in the early 1980s in Seattle. A network was first proposed for Tacoma and Pierce County in the mid-1990s, according to Wynands, whose 37-year-long career incorporates the history of HOV in the state.
"HOV lanes are designed to maximize the movement of people, rather than individual vehicles," said WSDOT spokeswoman Cara Mitchell.
Early design funding of what many call carpool lanes came through the state Legislature.
"And then the program really kicked off when the nickel gas tax package was passed (in 2003)", Wynands said. That was followed by the 9.5% gas tax in 2005.
That last package, the Transportation Partnership Program, allocated $7.1 billion to 274 projects over 16 years. WSDOT couldn't have built the entire Pierce County HOV system in one year even if it was physically possible, Mitchell said, because funding wasn't available in one lump sum. In addition, acquiring right-of-ways and permits can take years.
The 1990s-era plan called for a continuous HOV system on I-5 from Seattle south to SR 512 and another on SR 16 from I-5 to Port Orchard.
Construction in Pierce County began in 2001 in Nalley Valley at the I-5/SR 16 interchange, where the corridor needed widening and castle-like retaining walls were built.
In 2010, WSDOT opened its first Pierce County HOV lanes on a span of I-5 from the King County line to the Port of Tacoma Road.
The final piece of the puzzle — the Puyallup River bridge project — includes modification of the Port of Tacoma Road on-ramp to southbound I-5 and the rebuilding of the L Street overpass over I-5.
Adding to the cost and time of the project was the replacement of I-5's original concrete pavement from the 1960s. It's now mostly new from McKinley Avenue to Portland Avenue.
The project will be over when the final bells and whistles are added: new signs, lighting, barriers, stormwater collection and water treatment facilities.
When it's finally completed, HOV lanes will travel in both directions on I-5 from SR 16 to Seattle.
Completion of the Puyallup River bridges also will mean the end of what could be the most hated freeway merge in Tacoma, where the eastbound SR 16 HOV lane merges onto northbound I-5 with its HOV lane. That lane currently ends around the Delin Street overpass.
It usually comes up in any conversation about the construction.
"It's straight up scary," Twitter user Tyler Kain tweeted in 2020. "I had no idea that lane I was in was ending and almost ended up in an accident. I couldn't believe how abrupt that is."
That temporary merge might feel permanent to some drivers because it's been in place since late 2018. As miserable as it is, Mitchell said, it will smooth out when the HOV lane continues north.
Drivers will continue to see workers in the Puyallup River area after the new HOV lanes are open. They will be engaged in deconstruction as the two old bridges over the river will be carefully dismantled. Some of the machinery used for removing old girders and pilings is enormous, Mitchell said.
The dismantling machinery can only be used part of the year so as not to disturb fish runs.
"That work has to happen inside what we call fish windows," Mitchell said. "It has to be approved by the Puyallup Tribe."
How it's being built
Atkinson Construction has been required by WSDOT to keep three lanes of traffic open in both directions during peak traffic hours.
Construction could have gone faster, Wynands said, if crews had been able to reduce traffic in both directions to two or even one lane during work hours. But that might have turned the daily parade of frustrated drivers into road-raging maniacs.
Reduce more lanes and the project is completed sooner. Reduce fewer lanes and the traffic goes faster. No scenario will make everyone happy.
"It's extremely difficult to quantify how much time could be saved (by reducing lanes)," he said.
When both new Puyallup River bridges are open, they'll bring more than just HOV lanes to I-5.
The new bridges are wider, safer and straighter than their previous versions. When those old bridges were built in the 1960s, seismic safety was in its infancy. Despite a history of moderate earthquakes in Puget Sound, in the 1960s the region wasn't considered vulnerable to the magnitude of quakes that had struck California and Alaska. It is now.
That doesn't mean the other 1960s-era bridges along I-5 still in use are unsafe, Mitchell said.
State and federal officials have identified a "lifeline" route primarily along I-5 and I-90 that would ensure an emergency response and supplies can flow into Puget Sound from the north, south and east. WSDOT is spending $171 million to seismic retrofit bridges along that route over the next 10 years, Mitchell said.
Other I-5 projects
Other recent high profile projects that don't involve the HOV system are now complete along I-5.
The new Wapato Way East overpass that replaced the 70th Avenue East overpass at the Fife curve is now complete and full of traffic. It's part of the SR 167 Completion Project.
But drivers will see activity restart in the area in mid-2022 when the the old 70th Avenue East bridge is demolished. That will be followed by construction on a diverging diamond interchange (like the one on Marvin Road in Lacey). It will eventually connect SR 167 in Puyallup with SR 509 and the Port of Tacoma. That project will use automatic tolling rather than HOV lanes, according to WSDOT spokeswoman Laura Newborn.
A pair of new interchanges at Thorne Lane and Berkeley Street in Lakewood were essentially finished at the end of September. The project includes a new 4.5 mile-long southbound I-5 HOV lane from Gravelly Lake Drive to 41st Division Drive and a matching northbound I-5 HOV lane.
Not everything that involves I-5 is a WSDOT project. Drivers may have noticed work and improvements at the I-5/Port of Tacoma Road overpass in recent years. It's part of a new interchange that will involve building a new overpass over the freeway. That project was initiated, partially funded and is managed by Fife and the Port of Tacoma.
Other than a rebuilt southbound on-ramp, WSDOT has only an advisory/approval role in the project. Fife and the Port recently requested a $25 million grant from the federal Department of Transportation to complete the project. If the grant is approved, the project could be under construction within one year said Fife's assistant Public Works director Ken Gunther. Construction will take approximately 1 1/2 years to complete.
HOV projects on I-5 may be finished in Tacoma in 2022 but whether it stays that way is up to the state Legislature.
The full project calls for HOV lanes from where they now end at South 38th Street all the way to SR 512, a span of five miles.
If approved and funded by the Legislature, the project would complete the "ultimate configuration of 38th Street interchange" and reconstruct the 56th Street and 72nd Street interchanges, according to WSDOT.
The project would improve the I-5/SR 512 interchange and replace several overpasses along the route.
And expect to see more HOV lanes further south. The Steilacoom-DuPont Road interchange will be rebuilt beginning in 2023. HOV lanes will be added between DuPont and 41st Division Drive when finished.
Moving forward
Although the current HOV project has taken longer than anticipated due to environmental issues, permit delays and now the supply chain problems besieging the world it never had an official completion date, Wynands said.
One thing the delays haven't affected is the cost, Wynands said.
"I would say that we have come in where we expected to and slightly under budget," he said.
Will Tacoma ever re-enter that golden age of the 1960s when the freeway systems could handle daily traffic volume?
Those days might be gone for good, Wynands said, but he's quick to counter that the road systems of the 21st century can be made to work more efficiently. That, he said, is what WSDOT has been doing for the last two decades with its seemingly never-ending HOV project.
What does better efficiency look like? It means new technology like real time traffic monitoring, improved traffic management like HOV lanes, safer roads and faster incident response times and working with the Port of Tacoma and the trucking industry as partners.
WSDOT officials don't have predictions on how effective the new HOV lanes will be. But they point to less congestion on I-5 where the new HOV lanes have been implemented in the JBLM corridor as a harbinger of things to come.
Whatever speed they're moving at, Tacomans and anyone else who travel through the city on I-5 will enjoy a breather from construction beginning sometime in 2022.
But how long will that honeymoon last?
"You will not see more construction through Tacoma," Wynands said. "But the demand is still going up. And so we'll keep working with that."
