State and local leaders on Tuesday kicked off a project that will add a new interchange to the Interstate 205 corridor at Northeast 18th Street.
A rainy ground-breaking ceremony near the freeway represented a beginning and an end of sorts. Construction on the new interchange, which aims to improve safety and travel times in the area, will start in earnest next month, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. But the $40.6 million effort is the final project in Clark County funded by a pair of gas tax increases passed in 2003 and 2005.
“After this, there are no more big projects” without a new state transportation funding package, said Bart Gernhart, an assistant regional administrator with WSDOT. And several speakers, including a few state lawmakers, went out of their way Tuesday to suggest they hope something materializes in the near future.
“Hopefully, we can come up with a transportation package that we can all get behind,” said Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver.
Attempts to pass a funding package in Olympia have come up short two years in a row. Whether the idea gains any traction in 2015 remains to be seen.
The 18th Street interchange is a companion project to an earlier effort that remade part of a convergence that joins I-205, Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard and Northeast 112th Avenue. The next phase will add an offramp connecting northbound I-205 directly to 18th Street, and an onramp from 18th Street to southbound I-205. The project will also put a new roundabout on 18th Street to the west of the freeway.
Currently, there aren’t any interchanges on I-205 between Mill Plain and state Highway 500 — a stretch of about two miles.
The new addition is “an important piece of the puzzle” for Vancouver’s development plans along a key city corridor in 18th Street, said Mayor Tim Leavitt. The project continues a valuable a partnership between the city and WSDOT, he said.
“These important projects wouldn’t happen without a collaborative spirit,” Leavitt said.
WSDOT hired Vancouver-based Cascade Bridge LLC as its main contractor earlier this month. The project is expected to be complete in 2016, according to the agency.
Of the major projects paid for by the gas tax packages of a decade ago, only one other project remains unfinished: the widening of state Highway 502 between Interstate 5 and Battle Ground. Already under construction, that effort is also scheduled to be finished in 2016.
During Tuesday’s gathering, Gernhart listed nearly a dozen other projects that have altered the transportation landscape in Clark County in recent years. The 2003 and 2005 funding packages also paid for new I-5 interchanges for Ridgefield and Battle Ground, an expansion of state Highway 14 in Camas and Washougal and a new interchange at Highway 500 and St. Johns Boulevard in Vancouver. The largest of the batch, the $133 million Salmon Creek Interchange project, wrapped up earlier this year.
