As many longtime Tacoma residents likely know, the Washington State Department of Transportation has been hard at work on a major highway revision project involving the Port of Tacoma, the city of Fife, and the city of Puyallup.
Starting with the addition of a new major roundabout at the intersection of 99 and Wapato Way in 2022, the project is nearing completion of its second stage. By 2026 trucking to and from the port of Tacoma will make use of a brand new tollway, stretching from the port to I-5. By all appearances, a highly necessary development given the recent construction of the massive Bridge Industrial warehouse. In reaction to the recent Tideflats Subarea Plan, residents have expressed expectations that the new facility would greatly increase demands on both the port and local roads for trucking infrastructure.
While the current leg of the project is focused on connecting the Port of Tacoma to I-5, future expansions of the work will bring the expressway all the way over to Puyallup, and include a multi-purpose path running alongside the vehicle route for recreational use and bicycle commuters.
Notably, for the Puyallup Tribe, the project also includes the restoration of Hylebos Creek and other adjacent wetlands areas—with 116 acres of land set to be returned to the tribe for conservation and stewardship.
“The SR 167 Completion Project represents a unique opportunity to alleviate chronic flooding problems, improve water quality, and restore streams and wetland throughout the project corridor, providing substantial ecological lift for fish and wildlife in the Hylebos Creek basin,” wrote Herrera Environmental Consultants in a 2021 presentation to the International Conference on Ecology and transportation.
“These goals will be accomplished through what is called the Hylebos Riparian Restoration Program (RRP), an innovative watershed approach that involves a suite of aquatic and riparian improvements on approximately 150 acres of land adjacent to the new highway corridor.”
It’s a crucial victory for the Tribe, who held their 2025 Canoe Awakening ceremony at the Hylebos Waterway on the Port of Tacoma.
Community reaction to the project from Tacoma residents has been mixed, with many praising the restoration of key wetlands areas and the potential reduction in dangerous flooding, while others vented frustration at the extreme timeline the project has seen on its road to completion.
Actual construction of the expressway has been fairly recent, but plans to get the project underway have been in place for decades.
“We’ve actually got copies of those original design reports from the late 1950s,” SR 167 Project Manager Steve Fuchs said in a Port of Tacoma press release back in April.
For the next three months, the WSDOT will hold a virtual open house on the department’s website, inviting interested community members to both learn more about the project and to voice their own concerns to the department. Readers can find available resources at engage.wsdot.wa.gov
