Project news

• WSDOT has published an update at the WSDOT blog about summer construction on all of the HOV projects in Tacoma.  
• On May 12, all lanes of traffic were shifted onto the new 1,569 foot Puyallup River Bridge. 
• 20th Street East in Fife is open to traffic except for occasional nighttime closures and daytime alternating traffic between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to accommodate retaining wall construction. 
• This project is expected to finish in late 2018.
• Curious about traffic impacts? Visit tacomatraffic.com.
• For construction photos, please check out the project's Flickr album.
   

Why is WSDOT building new I-5 bridges over the Puyallup River along with new HOV lanes?
This project is part of the Tacoma/Pierce County HOV Program, a series of highway projects to provide operational improvements and high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lanes on Interstate 5 (I-5), State Route 16 (SR 16), and State Route 167 (SR 167).

Through Tacoma, heavy I-5 traffic creates frequent congestion. HOV lanes will help ensure that transit, vanpools and carpools move efficiently through the corridor, especially when traffic is congested in the adjacent general-purpose lanes. This reliability tends to increase ridership in multi-passenger vehicles and thereby helps ease demand in the general-purpose lanes, making the overall highway system work better for everyone.

The most notable work to occur in this project is building a new northbound Puyallup River Bridge that will be straighter and wider than the existing bridge. Both of these features are improvements that will help traffic move smoothly through the area.

The first stage of work was packaged into a separate contract called I-5 -Portland Avenue to Port of Tacoma Road Northbound HOV Stage 1. Construction on Stage 1 is complete.

The End Result
This project widens northbound I-5 from Portland Avenue to the Port of Tacoma Road to provide room for one HOV lane. As part of this project, WSDOT will also rebuild the northbound I-5 Puyallup River bridge,  improve the Portland Avenue interchange and repave all the lanes of northbound on I-5 within the project limits.

Needs & benefits

This project will provide a number of benefits to motorists.

Safety

• Widens shoulders.
• Improves ramp alignments and curves.
• Improves lighting.
• Adds new concrete barrier to help protect drivers.

Seismic Upgrades

• New bridges and walls will be built to current seismic standards. 
• The Portland Street and Bay Street bridges will be retrofitted to meet current seismic standards for existing structures.

Traffic and Operations

• Additional capacity will improve traffic flow.
• Reduces conflicting traffic movements or weaving areas.
• Adds on-ramp metering to maintain traffic flow.

Environmental Improvements

• Improves stormwater collection and treatment.

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Improvements

• Adds traffic cameras.
• Improves electronic signage for traveler notification.
• Adds highway advisory radio capacity.
• Installs traffic data collectors. (WSDOT uses data from the collectors to provide traffic information to the public and to monitor traffic conditions.)

Information gathered from ITS devices helps WSDOT respond more quickly to highway incidents, which in turn helps reduce traffic delays and blockages caused by incidents.

Timeline

The Stage 1 portion of this project is complete.

The remainder of the Northbound HOV project timeline follows.

• The project was awarded to Hamilton Construction Company Nov. 2014.
• Groundbreaking ceremonies were held Feb. 2015.
• Construction will occur through mid-2018.