Date:
Friday, July 27, 2007
Contact:
Lisa Murdock, WSDOT Communications, 360-357-2789
Long-awaited safety and visual upgrades to state Route 7 through Parkland and Spanaway should make Pierce County residents proud to once again call the highway their "Gateway to Mount Rainier."
"It's been 47 years since this highway was last widened and it's unlikely to be improved again in our lifetime," said County Councilmember Barbara Gelman (District 5). "This is for our grandchildren."
The two-year, $17.3 million state Department of Transportation project transformed the look of a five-mile stretch of SR 7 from SR 512 to the Roy Wye. It adds many driver and pedestrian safety improvements such as curbs, gutters, sidewalks, bike lanes, improved signal lights and street lighting, and landscaping and newly underground utility access points made the highway more aesthetically pleasing.
For decades, SR 7 - or Pacific Avenue - remained a rural highway despite carrying some of the county's heaviest traffic volumes and amassing an accident rate nearly double that of similar commercial-access highways. Constructed in 1940, it was widened to five lanes in 1960 and hasn't been significantly improved since.
Gelman said Pierce County fought especially hard for landscaping, transit and pedestrian improvements such as lighting, sidewalks, bus turnouts and attractive vegetation, for which the county contributed $700,000 of the project's funding. Further visual barriers were removed by moving utility access points underground along the roadsides.
WSDOT welcomes the public to join Gelman, other state legislators and local officials at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the project's completion on July 31 at 11:30 a.m. in the parking lot of the Spanaway K-Mart, 17911 Pacific Ave.
For more information visit www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR7/safety.
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