Facelift in works for Lacey road

LACEY – The City Council is poised to adopt the final plan to improve safety and traffic flow on the older residential stretch of College Street.

The large project between Lacey Boulevard and 37th Avenue Southeast will take at least 20 years to complete, Martin Hoppe, city transportation manager, told council members at a work session last week.

It will be broken up into five or seven more affordable phases that include buying all or part of about 60 properties.

The project is estimated to cost at least $26 million and would represent a major change for motorists who drive the corridor and the homeowners who live on it or connecting side streets. The plan, which is four years in the making, provides the most detailed information to date on how the corridor will change, although future refinements are possible.

“This is just setting up the blueprint to start the design work,” Hoppe told the council.

The City Council is expected to adopt the plan on May 28. Members raised no objections to the plan during the work session.

The corridor is the main north-south thoroughfare through the city. As the area’s population has grown, it has become increasingly congested and collision-prone. Twenty-one thousand vehicles used the corridor each day in 2005 and that volume is projected to grow to 32,000 by 2020, according to the city.

The busy corridor has 130 driveways and more than two dozen intersecting streets, holding up motorists as they wait for other drivers to turn left and increasing the risk of collision for those wanting to turn left in or out of them. The mix of heavy traffic, narrow sidewalks and no bike lanes discourages pedestrians and bicyclists, according to the report.

In August 2005, a consultant recommended improving the corridor by retaining two travel lanes in each direction but installing a center median, wider sidewalks and bike lanes. The median would improve traffic flow and safety by limiting left turns onto and out of side streets and driveways. Median breaks and roundabouts would provide access to side streets.

The city then hired another consultant, WHPacific Inc. to flesh out the initial work.

The right-of-way needed for the new corridor would increase from an average of 60 feet to up to 82 feet. The consultant selected an alignment to minimize the effect on property owners and reduce the cost to the city. The city would have to buy 23 parcels and purchase strips of property on about 40 others under the recommendation. The consultant assumed an entire parcel would be needed if the proposed right-of-way reduces a driveway length to less than 20 feet, the minimum under city standards, or encroaches within two feet of a building.

The consultants said $13 million is a reasonable estimate for right-of-way acquisition at this stage of the project development. Design, engineering and construction are estimated to cost another $13 million in 2008 dollars.

The city held open houses in October and November to solicit feedback on the developing plan. More than 80 percent of the 126 residents who completed feedback forms “generally agreed” with the plan.

The consultant made one major addition in the plan based on the comments. Two street connections were added to provide more than one access onto College Street by building a new road to connect 18th and 22nd avenues immediately east of Mountain View Elementary School, and another street connecting Judd Street between 24th and 25th avenues. The cost of those projects is unknown.

The consultant turned down a suggestion to increase the width of bike lanes to 5 feet from 3 feet. The report said the increased width wasn’t worth the estimated $1.7 million price tag since it will be primarily used by experienced cyclists and the corridor is near the Chehalis Western Trail.

Roundabouts are proposed at the intersections of 16th, 22nd and 29th avenues and will be built first so residents can maintain access to side streets and driveways while the median and other improvements are installed.

“All three roundabouts will be the first priority,” said Scott Sawyer, WHPacific’s lead consultant on the plan.

Design for the 22nd Avenue roundabout is set to begin next year, Hoppe said. The roundabout is listed on the proposed six-year transportation improvement program for 2010 so it can qualify for grant funding. The Lacey Planning Commission has scheduled a public hearing on the six-year plan at 5:30 p.m. on May 19.

City Manager Greg Cuoio said work session project funding will depend on state and federal grant funding because the two main revenue sources for the city’s street fund, gasoline and real estate excise taxes, generate a combined $2 million a year.

Other possible funding options including a local improvement district and a transportation benefit district. Both mechanisms can raise substantial tax revenue, but tax proposals are generally unpopular with the public.

Christian Hill is a reporter for The Olympian and can be reached at 360-754-5427 or at chill@theolympian.com">chill@theolympian.com.