page_title: Washington State Route 509
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Washington State Route 509 / History
caption_attribution_description: West Seattle
context_page_description: State Route 509 is a 35.17-mile-long state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, connecting Tacoma in Pierce County to Seattle in King County. The highway travels north from Interstate 705 in Tacoma to SR 99 south of downtown Seattle. It serves cities along the Puget Sound and west of Seattle–Tacoma International Airport in south King County, including Federal Way, Des Moines, and Burien. SR 509 is part of the National Highway System and is a limited-access highway near the Port of Tacoma and from Burien to its northern terminus in Seattle. Prior to the 1964 highway renumbering, the highway was part of Secondary State Highway 1V from Tacoma to Des Moines and SSH 1K from Des Moines to Seattle. SR 509 was re-aligned onto the Burien Freeway in 1968 and the Port of Tacoma bypass in 1997, coinciding with the opening of its interchange with I-705 and the cable-stayed 21st Street Bridge. Various proposals since 1988 have recommended building a freeway extension of SR 509 within the city of SeaTac, connecting the Burien Freeway to I-5, that remains unbuilt but is currently funded and will be extended to I-5 by 2028.
context_section_description: The present route of SR 509 from Des Moines to Seattle roughly follows a wagon road constructed in the late 1890s by King County along the Puget Sound. The highway between Federal Way and Kent was codified in 1923 as part of State Road 1 and in 1937 as Primary State Highway 1 (PSH 1). During the creation of the primary and secondary state highways in 1937, the highway between Tacoma and Federal Way was designated as SSH 1V and the highway between Des Moines and Seattle was designated as SSH 1K. SSH 1V traveled 19.54 miles (31.45 km) north from PSH 1 in Tacoma through the Port of Tacoma on the 11th Street Bridge and the Blair Bridge, opened in 1913 and 1953 respectively, to Federal Way, ending at an intersection with SSH 1K. SSH 1K traveled 12.76 miles (20.54 km) south from PSH 1 at the First Avenue South Bridge in Seattle through Burien and east through Des Moines to PSH 1 in Midway. The two highways were combined during the 1964 highway renumbering to become SR 509 and was codified into law in 1970. SR 509 was realigned onto the newly constructed north–south Burien Freeway in November 1968, extending from Seattle to SeaTac. The highway was originally routed through Saltwater State Park on Marine View Drive until 1991, when SR 509 was moved to two concurrencies with SR 99 in Federal Way and SR 516 in Des Moines.
  The freeway was planned to be extended south to SR 516 in the 1970s after a 4-mile (6.4 km) right-of-way was acquired by WSDOT before the project was canceled due to public opposition. The King County Department of Public Works recommended extending SR 509 southeast from South 188th Street to I-5 in 1988, with construction planned to begin in 1999 at an estimated cost of $252 million in 1996, raised to $1.4 billion a decade later. A freeway bypass of the Port of Tacoma for SR 509 was proposed in 1990 as a supplement to the newly completed I-705 and funded with a $180 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration approved the following year. Construction began in early 1994 amid controversy over the freeway's effects on the redevelopment of the Thea Foss Waterway. The first section of the new freeway opened in August 1995, while the cable-stayed bridge over the Thea Foss Waterway and single-point urban interchange with I-705 opened on January 22, 1997. The project cost a total of $165.3 million to construct, with the majority of funds from the federal government and a land claims settlement with the Puyallup Tribe. The Blair Bridge was closed and demolished to make way for a wider channel on the Blair Waterway for larger container ships.
  As part of the Puget Sound Gateway Program approved in 2015, WSDOT plans to build a freeway extension of SR 509 around the south side of Seattle–Tacoma International Airport and a spur freeway near the Port of Tacoma. The projects, together with an extension of State Route 167, are anticipated to cost $2 billion and were proposed in the mid-20th century. The three-mile (4.8 km) extension near SeaTac and a new interchange with I-5 would open in 2028. The Port of Tacoma project would also open in 2028, constructing a new diverging diamond interchange with I-5 near Fife for the extended SR 167 and a short freeway designated as SR 509 Spur. The SR 509 expansion was initially planned in the early 1990s and had funding approved by the legislature in 1998, but it was cancelled by later ballot measures.
caption: The northern terminus of SR 509, at an interchange with SR 99 constructed in the 1960s
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