SR 302 is only option, even with congestion

Marques Hunter

of the Gateway

When the new Narrows bridge opened, commuters instantly felt an impact on their daily lives.

Now the attention is squarely on state Route 302, where it connects with SR 16 and farther down the road to the infamous left-hand turn across the historic Purdy Bridge that serves as a gate to the Key Peninsula.

An average commuter who travels to and from the Key Peninsula during peak hours knows the trouble that lies ahead. Just ask former peninsula resident Jennifer Kalning, who moved to Tacoma just as Canterwood Boulevard and the Burley-Olalla Interchange closed due to construction, putting more stress on an already stressful traffic problem.

“It was terrible,” Kalning said about the return commute each evening.

Because of her job at a dental office in Tacoma — and her 6-year old son, Trevon, who attends school there, too — she said she was better off moving to a house in Tacoma to save time and gas.

She doesn’t fret about the peak-hour commute anymore, but the memories are still there.

“It used to take so long to just get over the (Purdy) bridge,” she said. “It’d be backed up all the way to the boat launch.”

That scenario during peak hours has gotten worse in the past 20 years, but more significantly between 1987-97. According to Washington State Department of Transportation figures, traffic doubled from 11,000 cars using the three-way interchange to more than 20,000 during that time.

In the past decade, it’s only increased a couple thousand.

“That really tells the story,” WSDOT engineer John Donahue said.

While traffic numbers have sporadically gone up in the past two decades, the percentage of those traveling to the Key Peninsula have remained the same.

Donahue said that, in 2000, two-thirds of the people turned left onto the Purdy Bridge while the other drivers continued through the intersection.

Kalning said her normal commute saw her leaving her house at 6:15 a.m. and missing morning traffic, but the return route clogged. She usually reached the Purdy Drive exit from state Route 16 about 5 p.m.

“Sometimes it’d take between 20 and 30 minutes,” she said. “It’s better now, but the exit still sucks.”

Backups to get on SR 302 concern many drivers, forcing WSDOT to turn the shoulder into another lane.

While it hasn’t resolved drive time, it has added capacity to the intersection, so cars entering SR 16 from Burnham Drive can merge without as much zig-zagging with drivers who are attempting to exit SR 16 onto Purdy Drive.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve had a fairly steady stream,” Steve Bennett, traffic operations engineer for the Olympic Region, said about the complaints of dangerous merging by two different sets of commuters.

The traffic backup stems from vehicles waiting at the light at the Purdy Bridge, about a half-mile after the exit. The pressure at the light, vital to transporting commuters, has been maximized by sheer volume.

“It just backs up in all kinds of ways,” Bennett said. “We wish we could invent more seconds in a minute.”

As of now, WSDOT is looking at a number of alternatives to alleviate pressure caused by limitations of the current infrastructure. The Purdy Bridge is only two lanes — and it can’t be widened. Infrastructure improvements to spread traffic out range from using the existing network of corridors, to adding a couple new ones.

That, of course, will take a lot of money and time.

An environmental study on SR 302 was completed earlier this month to evaluate existing conditions and determine motorist patterns.

WSDOT hopes to gather public input. An advisory committee was formed last month to begin analyzing any future changes to the corridor.

While getting onto and leaving the Key Peninsula has been a key issue for many years, congestion doesn’t seem to hold nearly as much weight. The most recent construction to SR 302 was the traffic light at Elgin-Clifton Road about five years ago, plus a few guard rails in stretches this past summer.

“We don’t get a lot of calls about it,” Donahue said about other places on SR 302 with heavy traffic congestion.

According to a Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula population growth data report by the Gig Harbor Peninsula Area Chamber of Commerce, the peninsula had a population of 17,399 and is expected to increase to nearly 20,000 by 2020.

Reach reporter Marques Hunter at 253-853-9246 or e-mail marques.hunter@gateline.com.