State Route 14 in Washington
SR-14 | |||
Get started | Vancouver | ||
End | Plymouth | ||
Length | 181 mi | ||
Length | 291 km | ||
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State Route 14 or SR-14 is a state route in the U.S. state of Washington. The road forms an east-west route through the Columbia River valley in the south of the state, between Vancouver and Plymouth. The part in Vancouver has been developed as a freeway, the rest is a secondary main road. State Route 14 is 291 kilometers long.
- SEARCHFORPUBLICSCHOOLS: Provides a list of all public primary and high schools in Washington, including street address, contact phone, and zip code for each school.
Travel directions
State Route 14 through the Columbia River Gorge.
State Route 14 begins as a highway near downtown Vancouver. This city has more than 150,000 inhabitants and can be seen as a suburb of Portland, which is located on the other side of the Columbia River. The highway has 2×2 lanes, is called the Lewis and Clark Highway and leads east. In the east of Vancouver it crosses Interstate 205, after which the highway section ends in the suburb of Camas.
East of Camas, State Route 14 leads through sparsely populated areas, the Columbia River Gorge. From the road you have a good view of the cliffs on the other side in Oregon. State Route 14 has a long stretch here with only small towns on the route. Traffic is low because Interstate 84 in Oregon handles most of the traffic on the other side of the river. State Route 14 also has few intersecting roads here, there are not many bridges over the mighty Columbia River. The landscape changes eastwards from subtropical rainforests to a barren steppe, with considerable height differences. On the easternmost 150 kilometers of the route, only a small number of hamlets remain on the route. At the village of Plymouth, State Route 14 terminates at a junction with theInterstate 82, 20 miles south of Kennewick.
- USPRIVATESCHOOLSFINDER.COM: Provides a list of all private primary and elementary schools in Washington, including street address, contact phone, and zip code for each school.
History
The road was originally developed as the North Bank Highway in the early 20th century. Construction of the road began in 1905 as a wagon road. This road was numbered as State Route 8. In 1926, with the creation of the US Highways, this route was numbered US 830. It ran parallel to US 30 in Oregon, across the Columbia River. Traditionally, the Oregon side route was more important than the Washington road.
The road was little developed in those years, not until 1934 much of the route through the Columbia River Gorge was a gravel road. In the 1950s and 1960s, this road was upgraded to a modern tarmac road, although it kept a secondary character as nearby US 30 in Oregon was converted to Interstate 84. In 1964, Washington’s state routes were renumbered with the State Route 8 was dropped in favor of US 830. However, all of US 830 was scrapped in 1968, renumbering the road as State Route 14, which originally applied to today’s US 12. The terminus was Kennewick at the time, but with the completion of I-82 in 1981, the number was shortened to Plymouth in 1985.
The western portion of the freeway through Vancouver was originally an at-grade urban arterial. This was converted into a freeway in the second half of the 1990s.
Between 2022 and 2024, State Route 14 between I-205 and 164th Avenue in Vancouver will have a rush hour lane.
Traffic intensities
Every day, 70,000 vehicles drive through Vancouver and 46,000 vehicles reach the end of the highway in Camas. East of Camas, the intensities quickly drop to around 5,000 vehicles per day, the stretch through the Columbia River Gorge has mostly 4,000 to 5,000 vehicles per day, but only 1,000 vehicles per day east of US 97.
State Route 16 in Washington
SR-16 | |||
Get started | tacoma | ||
End | bunting | ||
Length | 27 mi | ||
Length | 43 km | ||
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State Route 16 or SR-16 is a state route in the U.S. state of Washington. The road runs from Tacoma, a subcenter in the metropolitan area of Seattle, north to the city of Bremerton on the west side of the Puget Sound that separates Seattle from Bremerton. The road ends in Gorst on SR-3, and is largely a freeway. The route is 43 kilometers long.
Travel directions
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge and Mount Rainier.
Just south of downtown Tacoma, SR-16 exits from Interstate 5, which runs from Olympia to Seattle. The SR-16 has 2×3 lanes here and runs through the western neighborhoods of Tacoma, with a population of 203,000. One then reaches the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, an infamous bridge that collapsed due to the wind in 1940, and was rebuilt in 1950. In 2007 a second identical bridge opened so that there are now two suspension bridges next to each other. You then arrive at the Kitsap Peninsula, and you pass through a number of less developed and more expensive suburbs. The highway has 2×2 lanes here. In Gorst the highway ends at SR-3, which continues as a highway to Bremerton heading north.
History
Originally there were several state routes in this area, only with the opening of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 there was a more integrated route between Tacoma and Bremerton. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened on July 1, 1940, but proved to be poorly designed and collapsed in a storm on November 7, 1940. However, World War II delayed the construction of a new bridge, which was finally built between 1948 and 1950 and opened on October 14, 1950. This was a toll road until 1965.
Due to increasing congestion, the construction of a second bridge was approved by referendum in 1998. The second bridge was constructed between 2002 and 2007 and opened to traffic on 15 July 2007. The new bridge again became a toll road. This made the intersection of the Tacoma Narrows a freeway.
The connection was originally numbered State Route 14, but with the renumbering of 1964 it was given the number State Route 16. In the late 1960s the conversion of the road to a highway began, the first being the Nalley Valley Viaduct at the junction with I-5 in 1969-1971. In the 1970s and 1980s the road was further developed into a highway in Tacoma and on the Kitsap Peninsula, although there were a number of at-grade intersections at Port Orchard for a longer period of time.
The Nalley Valley Viaduct and interchange with I-5 was completely replaced in the period 2011-2019 and expanded with new flyovers. This was one of the most lengthy road projects in the Seattle area ever.
Traffic intensities
The intensities range from 98,000 vehicles in Tacoma to 33,000 vehicles on the Kitsap Peninsula.