Lawmakers over the past two years have battled over a second bridge to ease the bottleneck between Tacoma and the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas, first over how to finance its construction, then over how much of its costs would be borne by toll payers.

"For over a year, this project has been fully permitted and ready for construction. Now that the Legislature has finally agreed to a financing structure, construction can begin," Locke said Friday. "It was a tough fight, a lot of philosophical differences."

Sen. Bob Oke, one of the bridge's biggest proponents, wore a double-bridge lapel pin given to him by his wife, Judy, in 1996, the year some optimists hoped construction would begin.

"If we had started that year, it would be completed," said Oke, R-Port Orchard. "We'd be cutting the ribbon." Instead Oke is looking forward to the groundbreaking, and looking back at a twisted road of broken deals and political power plays.

Although only a small percentage of Washington residents will use the bridge on a regular basis, it became a pet project of House Speaker Frank Chopp over the past two years.

For eight years, the state had a contract with United Infrastructure of Washington calling for the private company to finance, build and operate the new bridge. Traffic would be reconfigured to run only one direction on each bridge, and the company would repay its financing with tolls on the new bridge of about $3 per vehicle, increasing to $5 in later years.

But Chopp, D-Seattle, opposed the deal, saying it would cost toll payers hundreds of millions of dollars more than having the state finance the bridge. It would also leave control of a public road in private hands, he said.

So last year he blocked repeal of a 40-year-old law that banned tolls on the existing bridge. Since toll traffic would essentially have flowed over both bridges under the plan, that law had soured the deal.

This year, with Chopp's public financing plan a done deal, the bridge drama entered a second act, when he and Senate Transportation Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen squared off over whether the bridge's toll-paying users or the state's taxpayers would pick up the tab for $39 million worth of improvements to the existing bridge and roads on either end of the new bridge.

Chopp wanted the state to pay for the improvements from gas-tax revenues, while Haugen, D-Camano Island, favored shifting the cost to toll payers so gas tax money could go to projects elsewhere in the state.

The Legislature's two chambers passed competing versions of the bill, but eventually, the Senate backed down and accepted Chopp's version.

Neither Chopp nor Haugen showed up at Friday's bill-signing ceremony, a jovial affair where Locke passed out official pens to a happy crowd that included U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, state lawmakers, lobbyists, businessmen and labor leaders.

"It's been a long time coming," said Dicks, who worked to push the compromise through. "I've seen so many accidents out there, and it's just getting worse. I just urged people to do the right thing."

Larry O'Bryon, vice president of United Infrastructure, was already huddling with Department of Transportation officials, preparing to renegotiate the contract for the bridge. The company will still design and build the bridge, but its financing and operation will be the state's responsibility.

The state has agreed to pay United Infrastructure $30 million for the work it has already done.

"We hope to be able to start construction sometime soon, hopefully late summer," O'Bryon said.

Construction will take about 4 1/2 years. Motorists would pay a round-trip toll of $3 for the first few years, eventually rising to $5 a trip.

Tolls are expected to remain on the bridge until 2029. Over that time, motorists would pay between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion in tolls.

For More Information:

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Web site -- tacomanarrowsbridge.com