LACEY, Wash. — All SB lanes of I-5 near Mounts Road in Pierce County were blocked for days following the Amtrak train derailment that killed at least three people, and injured at least 70 others Monday morning.
After crews moved all the cars and the locomotive on Wednesday, all lanes have since reopened. On Thursday night and early Friday morning, drivers encountered lane and ramp closures that have since wrapped up.
Crews need to make repairs to the rail bridge.
WSDOT said additional night closures will be announced once they are scheduled after Dec. 25.
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Drivers are encouraged to plan for extra travel time. If you do find congestion, here are alternate routes to take according to WSDOT and KIRO 7's RealTime traffic team:
Best detour: The primary detour is SR 16 to SR 3 – which is what commercial vehicles should use. Traffic leaders say this route is being under utilized.
Not recommended: We are seeing significant congestion on SR 507 and SR 7, and do not recommend travelers take SR 302. Some people reported being stuck in traffic for hours on these routes.
[ >> Click here to see photos from the scene ]
Local residents detour: A local-traffic-only detour is set up on Center Drive through JBLM to Nisqually and connecting to I-5.
Take a look at these routes on the interactive map below.
Nearly 60,000 drivers use the area of I-5 each day, according to WSDOT. .
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are still on the scene. They are looking into whether the Amtrak engineer whose speeding train plunged off an overpass was distracted by the presence of an employee-in-training next to him in the locomotive. Preliminary information indicated that the emergency brake on the Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state went off automatically and was not manually activated by the engineer.
The train was hurtling at 80 mph (129 kph) in a 30 mph (48 kph) zone Monday morning when it ran off the rails along a curve south of Seattle. Read more about the investigation here.
More on derailment from KIRO 7