Why did SK state highway numbers change?

The in basket: There was some discussion on the Road Warrior blog at kitsapsun.com back in January about notification to drivers in Gorst that Highway 166 was closed briefly by another slide.

Though a portable electronic sign in Gorst announced that Highway 166 was closed, enough people continued in that direction and had to turn around at the barricade that it became apparent that many drivers don’t know highways by their numbers. Specifically, it showed that a lot of drivers don’t know that the waterfront route between Gorst and Port Orchard IS Highway 166.

One of the bloggers wondered why the state moved the old Highway 160 designation for that Port Orchard-Gorst route to Sedgwick Road when it became a state highway and assigned a new number (166) to the old highway, contributing to the confusion.

I didn’t recall, so I asked.

The out basket: I should have recalled, because it was quite an issue at the time. State Traffic Operations Engineer Steve Bennett refreshed my memory.

“Highway 160 was shifted to Sedgwick Road by the 1991 legislature as part of the large Route Jurisdiction Transfer (RJT) legislation that affected hundreds of miles of county roads, city streets, and state highways,” Steve said. “. This legislation became effective April 1, 1992. At this time, old Highway 160 through Port Orchard was dropped from the state highway system.

“The 1993 session of the legislature added old Highway 160 from Highway 16 to the east city limits of Port Orchard back to the state highway system as Highway 166. The city or perhaps county had requested this action due to the slide conditions along old SR 160 on the west side of town.”

Repairs of those slides cost in the millions of dollars, too much for a small city and even a medium size county to afford.