Pacific Avenue Re-Opens - Sounder One Step Closer

When Pacific Avenue reopened yesterday, two months ahead of schedule after nine months of construction, it was a good day for a number of reasons.

Most obviously the road is now open to traffic once again, meaning those of you who used to make the north-south commute via Pacific are free once again to do so. It also means that the construction on the project to bring Sounder service to South Tacoma and Lakewood, and to re-route Amtrak trains is that much closer to completion. And finally, it hopefully means that businesses in the Dome District will get some relief from disruptions resulting from the construction.

October of this year is the target date for Sounder service to begin. There is a fairly substantial to-do list to be accomplished before that can happen, but once tracks are laid; crossings installed, landscaping, repaving, and a few other tasks are completed, the southern-most leg of the Sounder can begin running its five daily round trips to Seattle.

According to an article in the Tacoma Daily Index, we can expect a range of closures, temporary and permanent, of the streets around the construction. Streets affected include A Street, South C Street, East D Street, South 25th, 26th, and 27th Streets, East 25th and 26th Streets, temporary lane closures of South Tacoma Way, and a continuation of Pacific Avenue/I-5 access via the bypass from South Tacoma Way to South 27th Street. Okay, so the work’s not quite done yet, but it’s getting closer.

Read more from the Tacoma Daily Index.

Previously from Exit133: Sounder Construction Moving Forward.