Getting There: New highway segment planned between Tri-Cities and Walla Walla

A new four-lane divided highway is expected to make travel between the Tri-Cities and Walla Walla safer and faster.

Walla Walla County received a $108.5 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant this month to finish the 24-year-old project to expand U.S. Highway 12 in southcentral Washington.

“This will be a much safer highway than the one we had,” County Commissioner Gunner Fulmer said. “We are very excited about it.”

The project’s previous phases expanded the lanes between Pasco to north of Wallula, and from Walla Walla to east of Touchet. The most recent segment, which opened in June 2023, bypassed the towns of Touchet and Lowden.

The final segment will link the two ends of the project in the middle. The new 10-mile highway will veer east from the bank of the Columbia River at Attalia, an industrial area north of Wallula, cutting through farmland and rejoining the current Highway 12 at Nine Mile Hill, east of Touchet.

The project was spearheaded in 2001 by the U.S. Highway 12 Coalition, a partnership between Walla Walla County, the city of Walla Walla, the Port of Walla Walla, local businesses and other organizations.

Fulmer said this part of Highway 12 is especially dangerous and consistently kills three or four people a year.

The high-traffic winding road plus high winds make a deadly combination. Windstorms have been known to push vehicles into oncoming traffic, Fulmer said. Unsafe passing on the two-lane highway causes other collisions.

The new highway will be separated by a 42-foot median.

The old highway’s topography – with an embankment on one side and a drop-off on the other – makes it impossible to widen the current footprint, Fulmer said. The new route is also more direct.

When the highway opens, the old highway will become a county road, Fulmer said.

The project still needs to raise about $280 million. Fulmer said the county is working with the state to match the federal dollars, but it will need to find some additional funding to finish the project.

Washington State Department of Transportation is beginning the land acquisition process. Construction is estimated to begin in 2027 and finish by 2030.

Fulmer said Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray were crucial advocates for securing the federal funding.

“Highway 12 is the transportation backbone of the region, and this infrastructure investment will help it become a manufacturing and economic hub – which is going to bring lots of new, permanent, good-paying jobs,” Cantwell said in a statement.

Cantwell is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

The $108.5 million grant is the largest ever awarded by the federal Rural Surface Ground Transportation Program.

The rural route conveys agricultural and industrial freight, regular commuters, traffic from Oregon and wine country tourism. Traffic volumes on Highway 12 are expected to double by 2050.

Fulmer said the project will support the development of the Wallula Gap Business Park, an industrial zone on the west side of the county.