TACOMA – Weather permitting, at 11 p.m. tonight crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation will close a segment of the northbound Interstate 5 exit to State Route 16 and Interstate 705 (Exit #132).
The closure will not affect northbound I-5 traffic headed to westbound State Route 16.
The close proximity of the South 38th on-ramp to the work zone means that crews will also close that ramp, affecting traffic going from South 38th Street to northbound I-5, the Tacoma city center or SR 16.
Both ramps will reopen to traffic by 4 a.m. tomorrow.
During the closures, crews will restripe the two-lane segment of Exit #132 that joins to the northbound I-5 collector/distributor lanes leading to I-705 and downtown Tacoma. The segment will be restriped to one lane.
The two-lane capacity of the exit was temporary and was put into place in April 2012 when WSDOT closed the mainline I-5 exit to the Tacoma City Center for three months for construction activities in the I-5/SR 16 Eastbound Nalley Valley project. The project is now nearing completion and crews have begun restriping SR 16 and I-5 into their final configurations, which includes returning that exit segment to its pre-construction condition of one lane.
Other closures are occurring this week on eastbound SR 16 associated with removing false work on the two new South Sprague Avenue on-ramps to northbound and southbound I-5, and can be found on the project web page. The ramps are scheduled to open to traffic in late July.
