Main route from Tacoma’s East Side to I-5 to be temporarily cut

A main traffic artery connecting Tacoma’s East Side to Interstate 5 will be severed for at least a month starting Wednesday.

That’s when crews working for the state Department of Transportation will close the ramp from northbound state Route 7 to northbound I-5. The ramp allows traffic from 38th Street to access the interstate near the Tacoma Dome.

Transportation Department officials are encouraging drivers to use Interstate 705 as a detour but warned of potential delays.

The closure also will deprive motorists coming off eastbound state Route 16 of a bypass around heavy northbound I-5 traffic.

The existing ramp will be demolished during the closure, officials said last week.

  

“Once the old ramp is gone, crews will reconstruct a new realigned ramp that will join a newly widened I-5,” Transportation Department spokeswoman Cara Mitchell wrote in a news release.

The work is part of the long-running project to widen and rebuild the surface of I-5 through Tacoma.

Two other parts of that project could complicate the commute this week.

The first is scheduled for overnight Wednesday and Thursday, when crews plan to divert northbound I-5 traffic off the main freeway near South 38th Street.

The closure will be in place from about midnight to 4 a.m. the next day.

Traffic will be detoured via the parallel collector-distributor lanes and then onto I-705 and state Route 509 before rejoining I-5.

The second project is scheduled for Friday, when workers hope to close the existing ramp from northbound I-5 onto northbound state Route 167 (River Road).

The closure would allow crews to put the finishing touches on and open a new ramp there, possibly by March 6.

Bad weather has delayed that project several times over the past few weeks.

This story was originally published February 26, 2017 at 10:37 AM with the headline "Main route from Tacoma’s East Side to I-5 to be temporarily cut."