PIERCE CO., Wash. — The backup starts at the Fife curve, just south of the King County line, and runs past downtown Tacoma all the way to Joint Base Lewis-McChord just north of Thurston County.
Since 2000, Pierce County's population has grown from an estimated 130,000 to 140,000 people to more than 831,000 residents.
Every day 185,000 of those people drive the Interstate 5 corridor.
“This is a lifeline going through Pierce County,” said Washington Department of Transportation project engineer Jon Deffenbacher.
To get all those people through, WSDOT is making room.
The department is depending on $98 million in tax dollars to add HOV lanes along the busy stretch near the Tacoma Dome.
That means tearing down and replacing two bridges, digging away at hillsides and widening the freeway that passes downtown Tacoma.
Work will go on until late 2017 while cars and trucks continue to use the crowded interstate.
“And that presents a lot of challenges,” said Deffenbacher.
Those new lanes will soon cross a new bridge spanning the Puyallup River to the east and tie into the nearly complete Nalley Valley interchange on State Route 16, just west of the construction zone.
Then there is the Joint Base Lewis-McChord backup to the south.
It is notorious for lengthy, slow moving, bumper to bumper traffic jams.
“I’ve been here since 1967, and it was fine back then, but it’s terrible now,” said Don Kell, a longtime Lakewood resident.
This is where I-5 narrows from four to three lanes -- not enough to accommodate the 90,000 to 100,000 soldiers, airmen, civilian workers, and family members who crowd onto the freeway going to and from base each day.
“There’s just a lot more people on Interstate five than this stretch of highway was ever designed to handle,” said JBLM public affairs officer Joe Piek.
Widening the freeway outside JBLM will cost $495 million, with work still in the planning stages.
Three bridges are coming down and being replaced, more lanes added, and an interstate designed in the 1960s and 70s will finally be upgraded by the year 2020.
“So we’re really in a position of trying to catch up with capacity in comparison with demand on the corridor,” said WSDOT’s Bill Elliott.
That will be good news for drivers.
The bad news is they’ll be putting up with almost non-stop construction on I-5 in Pierce County for at least five more years.