State Route 160 is a long state highway serving Kitsap and King counties in the U.S. state of Washington. The highway begins at an interchange with SR 16 in Port Orchard and travels east to the Southworthferry terminal, where the route continues onto a ferry to Vashon Heights, the former southern terminus of SR 339, and further east to end at the Fauntleroy ferry terminal in Seattle. SR 160 was established during the 1964 highway renumbering beginning at SR 16 west of Port Orchard traveling east to Southworth along the Carr Inlet. The corridor was previously a branch of Primary State Highway 14, established in 1937. The highway was moved south in 1991 and the Southworth-Vashon-Fauntleroy ferry was added in 1994.
Route description
SR 160 begins as Sedgewick Road at a diamond interchange with parent route SR 16 south of Port Orchard in Kitsap County. The highway briefly travels northeast before turning east and entering East Port Orchard, serving a suburban area north of Long Lake. The roadway continues east and passes John Sedgwick Junior High School before turning north into Southworth, Within Southworth, Sedgewick Road ends as SR 160 travels onto a ferry route owned and operated by Washington State Ferries. The Evergreen State class ferries and, as well as Issaquah 130 class ferry serve the route, which travels east from Southworth into King County. The ferries stop at the Vashon Heights terminal, intersecting the now-defunct SR 339 ferry from Vashon to Seattle, before continuing east to the Fauntleroy ferry terminal in West Seattle, located in Fauntleroy Cove. The ferry route is 45 minutes long, as the MV Klahowya and MV Tillikum travel at a speed of, and the MV Issaquah travels at. WSF operates the ferry every weekday with 33 crossings and weekends with 26 crossings, as a $5 toll for adult passengers is charged with prepaid Wave2Go cards being accepted. Every year the Washington State Department of Transportation conducts a series of surveys on its highways in the state to measure traffic volume. This is expressed in terms of average annual daily traffic, which is a measure of traffic volume for any average day of the year. In 2011, WSDOT calculated that between 1,500 and 24,000 vehicles per day used the highway on the Kitsap Peninsula, mostly at the SR 16 interchange in Port Orchard. The Southworth-Vashon-Fauntleroy ferry carried 2.886 million passengers and 1.674 million vehicles in 2012, according to WSF statistics.
History
SR 160 was established in 1964 as a highway beginning at SR 16 west of Port Orchard to Southworth. This highway was originally created in 1923 as a branch of the Navy Yard Highway, signed as State Road 14 from Port Orchard to Harper. The branch was included as part of PSH 14 during the creation of the Primary and secondary state highways in 1937. The PSH 14 branch was extended to Southworth in 1957, and became signed as SR 160 in the 1964 highway renumbering. SR 160 was re-aligned south in 1991 to better serve the Southworth-Fauntleroy ferry, but the new alignment was temporarily repealed until the creation of SR 166 in 1993 due to a major mudslide. The Southworth-Fauntleroy ferry was added to SR 160 in 1994 along with the rest of the Washington State Ferries. No major revisions to the route of the highway have occurred since 1994.
