Government Transportation
City adds Austin-Harborview roundabout to road plan; envisions possible Hunt Street overcrossing
A couple interesting new projects recently emerged during Gig Harbor transportation planning.
A roundabout at Austin Street and Harborview Drive landed on the city’s 2026-31 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). And a Hunt Street overcrossing of Highway 16 appeared on a yet-to-be-adopted 2025 list of projects eligible to receive transportation impact fees (TIF).
The city must annually prepare a six-year Transportation Improvement Program consistent with its comprehensive plan and file it with the state Secretary of Transportation and state Transportation Improvement Board (TIB) to receive state and federal funding. The TIB is an independent agency that awards gas-tax grants for city street projects.
The six-year plan changes little from year to year. Generally, a few projects are completed and fall off the top, remaining ones move up and a few new jobs get added. This year, the Austin-Harborview roundabout debuted at Priority 9 among 28 projects.
The three-way stop at the intersection of Harborview Drive and Austin Street could become a roundabout. Photo by Ed Friedrich
Austin is the one-way street behind North Creek that Ts into Harborview at a three-way stop. The city projects the estimated $3.1 million roundabout will be built in 2031. That’s after a bridge replaces an adjacent fish-blocking culvert under Harborview.
“As part of the North Creek culvert design, we had our design team bring that roundabout to a 30% concept level to make sure if we do install a roundabout someday at that location it’ll fit after we do the North Creek culvert,” said City Engineer Aaron Hulst.
New bridge awaiting grant
The city provided funding in its 2023-24 budget to design and permit the North Creek bridge. It applied for a National Culvert Removal, Replacement and Restoration Grant with the Federal Highway Administration of up to $4 million for construction. It is waiting to hear back. The city expects the estimated $7.6 million job to go to bid early next year, pending funding.
Hunt Street and other city roads used to dangerously cross Highway 16. They were stubbed in 1970, when the highway widened to four lanes, according to local historian Greg Spadoni. Now there is movement to reconnect Hunt, which isn’t included in the city’s 6-year plan because it’s too far into the future.
The City Council in March included the overcrossing as a long-range project in the transportation element of the 2024 comprehensive plan. It will hold a public hearing on an updated impact-fee list in August that includes Hunt Street for possible adoption in September, Hulst said.
Hunt Street would reconnect with itself across Highway 16 from its stub on the west side to the area of Wilco and the Kimball Drive park-and-ride. Photo by Ed Friedrich
The description states that the overcrossing “will add a critical east-west connection over SR-16, reduce congestion at nearby interchanges, and provide new pedestrian and bicycle facilities.” A new roundabout on the east side would tie it into Kimball Drive, according to a “very high-level concept design,” Hulst said. The estimated cost is $40 million, though the city has chosen to make just $4 million eligible for impact fees. It expects the project would receive outside funding and it didn’t want to jack up impact fee rates to uncompetitive levels.
“That one certainly is a long-range project, but we decided to include 10% of it on the impact-fee-eligible project list so if we did get some federal grant that we are able to put impact fees toward it,” Hulst said. “It would be such a high-dollar project, it would take a number of funding sources — federal, state and local funds and impact fees — to eventually build.”
Wouldn’t connect to highway
The overcrossing would not include on- and off-ramps to the highway.
“That project will likely not be allowed to access the highway being it’s in our limited access corridor,” Hulst said. “The state won’t allow us to have any more access points than we already have. But it will alleviate congestion at the existing Olympic and Wollochet interchanges as people have an additional way to get across 16.”
Pierce Transit in the mid-2000s planned to build a park-and-ride lot west of the highway and connect it with the Kimball Drive park-and-ride on the east via a pedestrian bridge over the highway. Buses would have stopped at a platform in the highway median to pick up and drop off passengers from both sides. The project was canceled in 2009 during an economic downturn.
Other new 6-year plan projects are a Burnham Drive/Borgen Boulevard corridor study that replaces restriping the Highway 16 overpass to four lanes and adding a pedestrian crossing there, and improvements to the Harborview Drive-Soundview Drive intersection near the Tides Tavern.
38th Avenue looking north across 56th Street. This signalized intersection will become a roundabout and the stretch of 38th from here to Hunt Street will be improved. Photo by Ted Kenney
Four projects are expected to begin construction in 2026 — two associated with 38th Avenue and two with the Wollochet Drive overpass. The TIP this year breaks the 38th Avenue work into two projects — a roundabout at 56th Street and half-width roadway improvements between 56th and Hunt streets.
Roundabout replacing 38th Avenue signal
The roundabout will replace a traffic signal and, according to a city study, head off future congestion. The half-width roadway improvements will comprise building a two- to three-lane section with left-turn pockets, bicycle lanes, curbs and gutters as necessary, a landscaped planter strip or swale, a sidewalk on the east side, and storm sewer improvements.
Construction will cost an estimated $6.6 million, according to the city’s capital project webpage. Gig Harbor received TIB grants of $1.6 million for the roundabout and $750,000 for the corridor. Staff are reviewing the final design. The city anticipates construction from spring through winter 2026.
The city will hold an open house later in the year to review the project and what the public should expect during construction.
Two projects are designed to relieve congestion on the Wollochet Drive overpass. On the east end, a right-turn slip lane will be built to access the westbound on-ramp to Highway 16. On the east end, a right-turn lane will be added to the eastbound off-ramp from Highway 16. Traffic signals will be synchronized from Hunt Street to Kimball Drive.
Each project is expected to cost $990,000 and begin construction in summer 2026. The Legislature allocated $840,000 for each in the 2023-25 transportation budget and reallocated the funds in April to the 2025-27 budget.
Wagner Way still awaiting signal components
Intersection improvements at Wollochet Drive and Wagner Way take top priority in the 6-year plan, though the city webpage states the project should be finished by September. The $1.3 million job entails a new traffic signal, pedestrian improvements, a new bike lane and repaving the intersection.
Active Construction began the $1.3 million project in May 2024, but back-ordered signal system components have delayed completion. The contractor returned to the site on May 8 to install poles that arrived and underground wires between the intersection and Highway 16. But LED light components for the traffic signal haven’t been delivered.
“I’m keeping that on (the 6-year plan) out of an abundance of caution,” Hulst said. “Every time we’ve heard from the contractor that parts are going to show up on Friday and they’ve got a delivery date, the delivery date keeps getting kicked back.”
Traffic barrels will remain until the signal system is functional. Then the contractor will place the permanent lane lines and symbols.
The City Council held a public hearing on the six-year plan on July 14, then adopted it.
City reworking impact fee ordinance
Besides updating the Transportation Impact Fee project list, the city intends to change the ordinance in response to new state law. Engrossed Senate Bill 5258 requires jurisdictions to provide reduced transportation, school and park impact fees for accessory dwelling units. Gig Harbor plans to remove language in its code related to the exemption or reduction of impact fees for low-income housing, revise it and add it back through a future ordinance.
A public hearing will be held at the July 28 City Council meeting.