The I-182/US 12 concurrency travels through the Goose Gap in the Horse Heaven Hills and continues northeast into suburban Richland, cutting between housing subdivisions and big-box stores around the Queensgate Drive interchange.

[4][5] I-182 continues concurrently with US 12 and US 395 around the south side of the Columbia Basin College campus and utilizes an eastbound collector–distributor lane until its next interchange at 20th Avenue, near the entrance to the Tri-Cities Airport.

[3] The Tri-Cities region gained its first overland connection in July 1888 with the completion of the Northern Pacific Railway's permanent bridge over the Columbia River between Kennewick and the new town of Pasco.

[17] I-82 was added to the Interstate Highway System in October 1957 by the federal government, which allocated approximately 132 miles (212 km) for the corridor from Ellensburg, Washington, to Pendleton, Oregon.

[19] The initial proposal from the federal government, which was approved by the Washington State Highway Commission in January 1958, would follow the Yakima Valley but bypass the Tri-Cities by turning south near Prosser or Mabton to cross the Columbia River near Boardman, Oregon.

[20] After the route was shifted east in 1958 to cross the Columbia River on the existing Umatilla Bridge, business leaders in the Tri-Cities began lobbying for a longer freeway to directly serve the area.

[21][22] In 1961, the state government ordered a feasibility study to examine a modified route that would serve the Tri-Cities, including the use of the Hanford Site to bypass the Yakima Valley.

[23][24] The study initially concluded that a Tri-Cities alignment would be unable to stay within the maximum mileage from the federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) for the project,[25] but a re-study was ordered in January 1962.

[22] The commission instead chose a route that would turn south in Prosser, which sparked another round of requests the following year from the newly-formed Benton–Franklin Counties Good Roads Association.

[39] Construction on the 35-mile (56 km) freeway was scheduled to begin as early as 1971 if engineering work was accelerated,[40][41] but was delayed by limited funding and disputed routing decisions.

[43] Other sections were redesigned through route revisions prompted by local requests, particularly in Pasco after the governments of Richland and Benton County approved a tentative design for two interchanges in October 1970.

[44] The state's proposed alignment north of the Tri-Cities Airport was abandoned in favor of a southern route around the Columbia Basin College campus connecting to the Pasco Bypass.

[55] A cross-state compromise was reached in late 1973, which allowed for I-82 to be routed through the Horse Heaven Hills to the southwest of the Tri-Cities and towards the Umatilla Bridge;[34][56] a truncated version of I-182 would then run from an interchange near Badger Mountain to Pasco.

The Richland city government attempted to shift the location of the SR 240 interchange to the west side of the Yakima River, but withdrew those plans amid criticism from other local officials.

[69] The state government estimated that 37 homes, several warehouses, an adult movie theater, and part of a local golf course would need to be demolished or relocated to make way for the freeway.

[73] Completion of I-182 was also delayed by a federal freeze on highway funding with major cutbacks on projects that had not begun construction ordered by the Carter administration in early 1980 due to a national inflation crisis.

[78][79] The state legislature passed a law in March 1982 that would allow WSDOT (successor to the highways department) to sell short-term municipal bonds in order to resume stalled projects, including I-182, until the federal government would be able to allocate more funds.

[86][87] Bidding on the Richland section of I-182 between the Yakima and Columbia rivers was delayed due to a months-long land dispute with the owner of a gravel pit on the site of a proposed interchange.

[90][91] The section also included the partial closure of the city-owned Sham-Na-Pum golf course at Columbia Point, which was reconfigured to allow for continued play until its planned redevelopment into a shopping mall.

[100] A 5-mile (8.0 km) section in Pasco between Road 100 and Columbia Basin College was completed in September 1984 but remained unopened for another month due to delays in light installation.