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SR 16, Sprague Avenue to Snake Lake

Schedule: Poor Project was extended by five months and met a mid-October completion schedule. Cost: Poor Engineer’s estimate: $15,258,000 Contractor’s bid amount: $16,301,000 Anticipated final payment: $17,100,000 The increase in working days and cost is due to delay impacts. The delays can be attributed to design errors as well as changing conditions in the field.

Mowat Construction was the contractor to widen State Route (SR) 16 in Tacoma from the Sprague Avenue Interchange to the east side of the Tyler Street/Mason Avenue Bridge (Snake Lake vicinity). The widening accommodates future HOV lanes and is one of 22 projects that ultimately will add HOV lanes on I-5 from the King County line to SR 512 and on SR 16 from I-5 to Purdy. This project is needed prior to the start of the planned, major reconstruction of the Nalley Valley Interchange.

This project included widening the Cedar Street and Union Avenue bridges, widening pavement, rebuilding the Union Avenue Interchange ramps, and improving the pedestrian/bicycle path from Sprague Avenue to Union Avenue. Managing traffic while staging construction work on this high-volume freeway corridor was a major challenge and motorist dissatisfaction was high, especially as project completion was delayed past the original schedule.

The design of this project was performed for WSDOT by a private consultant, however, the contract with the consultant was terminated due to reductions in the transportation budget after the passage of I-695. The project plans were handed over to WSDOT and later made ready for advertisement to contractors. In most work designs are developed by WSDOT's engineering staff. The project was completed five months after the planned date to accommodate problems that arose during construction, which included:

    * Engineering plan errors were discovered that required portions of the bridge be constructed one side at a time rather than concurrently, as was originally planned.
    * A water treatment pond planned for the project needed to be redesigned.
    * A slope failure required the redesign of a retaining wall, delaying project work.

Contact:
Mike Morishige, Project Engineer
Phone: 253-589-6100

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