New bridges open in Tacoma

TACOMA – Two new bridges over Interstate 5 are opening soon, reuniting the city’s downtown with neighborhoods on the opposite side of the freeway.

The Yakima Avenue bridge is scheduled to open Friday afternoon, while the Delin Street bridge opens in mid-March. Residents in the Lincoln Park area should expect increased traffic in their neighborhoods.

Drivers in the area have used alternate routes since the spring 2006 closure of the former overpasses, which crews demolished to make room for I-5 widening and improvements.

Opening the new Yakima Avenue and Delin Street bridges is a major milestone for the I-5 HOV Improvements, 48th Street to Pacific Avenue project, which wraps up this spring. Already, the project built a new downtown exit, a new State Route 16 connection to northbound I-5, and a mile-long northbound collector-distributor roadway.

This project is part of WSDOT’s Tacoma/Pierce County HOV Program, a series of improvement projects that builds HOV lanes and provides other operational improvements to I-5, SR 16 and SR 167.