These Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater intersections need work. How are they being addressed?
Earlier this summer, The Olympian asked the public for its opinion on which intersections in urban Thurston County are the worst. The answers came to no surprise to officials in Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, and the consensus is many of the streets need work.
Here’s a breakdown of the worst, and best, intersections identified in the survey, and what each city had to say about them.
Olympia
At the top of the worst list was Cooper Point Road and Black Lake Boulevard.
Michelle Swanson, senior planner for the City of Olympia, said Cooper Point and Black Lake on the west side is likely the city’s busiest intersection, feeding into U.S. Highway 101. And there’s poor street connectivity.
Sophie Stimson, city transportation director, said street connectivity has to do with differences in the types of street grids in a city. She said for example, the downtown core and older parts of the city are smaller with more narrow streets that carry less traffic. Then there’s Cooper Point and Black Lake, where 14 lanes intersect in a 35 mph zone, and few or no alternative routes exist.
“That’s why there’s so much traffic congestion, because traffic isn’t getting dispersed onto adjacent streets,” Swanson said.
Turns out, none of the three worst Olympia intersections have a well-connected street grid, Swanson said. The other two are Martin Way and Sleater Kinney — another with more than a dozen lanes — and Herman and Wiggins Roads, a narrow T intersection.
Swanson said Cooper Point and Black Lake is the city’s most difficult intersection, and there are plans to address the public’s concerns. She said the city wants to build more streets in the area to give people more route options. That’s part of the Capital Mall Triangle Subarea plan, which envisions the corridor as one of three urban centers to be formed in the next 20 years.
Stimson said the key is staying away from widening the roads and intersections. She said that could come through modifying the way lanes are used, modifying signals, or putting in roundabouts.
“It’s important that we not make intersections wider as we move forward, but find ways to make them work better,” Stimson said.
An example of this would be at State Avenue and East Bay Drive, which came up in the survey as one of the best intersections. Stimson said she’s really proud of that project, which included narrowing the road and making crossing distances shorter for pedestrians and cyclists. Bike lanes in the intersection were protected, too, due to a history of collisions. And the bus stop was built out, allowing the bus to stop in the lane of travel, which Stimson said shows that transit has priority on Olympia streets.
Swanson said the idea to shorten crossing distances came out of the city’s 2020 analysis for its Street Safety Plan. She said it reduces pedestrians’ and cyclists’ exposure to vehicles, which increases their safety. Stimson said there are plans for similar work to be done in the next few years down the street at Fourth Avenue and Plum.
Swanson said improvements are coming to Martin Way and Sleater Kinney in the future, too. She said Olympia just finished its study of the corridor, working Thurston County and Lacey to figure out how to make it more people oriented. Swanson said there will be more housing and mixed-use developments in the area in the future, and it’s important to make it more walkable and bikeable, as well as able to better support frequent transit service on the road.
“Martin Way is really influenced by traffic on I-5, so when we see problems on I-5, Martin Way takes up some of the slack,” Swanson said. “While it’s really important as a big regional connector, it’s also a place where we’re going to see a lot more people walking and biking. We need to make sure we’re building the improvements to support them.”
Long term, Swanson said the city wants to see roundabouts built in the corridor, which would make traffic flow better. In the short term, pedestrian crossings will be improved.
The city also is working with Intercity Transit to try transit signal priority. When a bus approaches a signal during heavy traffic, the light will stay green longer to ensure the bus can pass through and stay on schedule. The hope is it will make taking the bus more convenient and inviting to people.
Herman and Wiggins, one of the city’s few east-west connectors, also may get a roundabout in the future. But Stimson said there are environmental constraints. There are wetlands in the area, and the city would need to figure out stormwater management. A signal may be installed while those issues are ironed out.
Swanson said one of the city’s biggest problems, especially compared to its neighbors, is that so much of Olympia has been built to support vehicle traffic, not pedestrians.
“We’re challenged with retrofitting a built environment that was in many ways built around cars so that it can be built around people, that more human-scale design,” Swanson said.
With roundabouts, most of the time it’s taking an already-built intersection and retrofitting it to work better for all modes of transportation. Stimson said you don’t have to widen streets with typical turn lanes because roundabouts accommodate traffic more efficiently. It keeps streets narrow as they approach intersections, which is safer for cyclists and pedestrians, as well as cars. There’s more predictability, Stimson said, with less stopping and starting.
Another benefit of roundabouts is it gives buses places to turn around, giving them more route flexibility, something Stimson and Swanson said is lacking on east-west roads.
There are many other safety improvement projects in the works in Olympia, including at Harrison Avenue and Cooper Point Road. The intersection came up both as a good and bad one in The Olympian’s poll. Swanson said there have been a number of bicycle collisions at the intersection, which will be improved within the next 20 years.
Tumwater
Tumwater officials are proud to say they’re addressing the city’s most crucial intersection, Capitol Boulevard and Trosper Road at I-5. City spokesperson Ann Cook said the $12.5 million project will in the end reduce traffic delays, improve pedestrian safety and more. In just a few months, the city has built a new road and a roundabout.
There are more projects to come in Tumwater, and more than one crucial intersection. The Olympian’s poll identified Trosper and Littlerock roads, Tumwater and Henderson boulevards, and Linwood and Second avenues as areas where people feel uneasy traveling for a number of reasons.
Mary Heather Ames with Tumwater’s Transportation and Engineering Department said the city doesn’t create bad intersections.
“I can’t say there’s a poor intersection, because there are not,” Ames said. “They have been designed for the purpose of moving people and goods safely. What I can say is that intersection design can affect driver perception.”
At the same time, two of the three intersections pointed out by the public have been identified by Tumwater officials as needing improvements.
Ames said Trosper and Littlerock roads is challenging because of an unequal amount of traffic coming from each direction. There are plans to evaluate the intersection for improvements in a few years, alongside Tyee Drive, laid out in the city’s Transportation Improvement Plan.
Tumwater and Henderson boulevards was a surprise to Ames, because it has a typical intersection layout. But it may be added to a list of intersections to be evaluated by the city’s Traffic Team for improvements.
Ames said sometimes an issue can be as simple as a stoplight not working due to a spider web over the detection camera. The Traffic Team has the technology and connections to other city departments to determine problems and solutions, no matter how large or small.
On the flipside, Ames was happy to see Linwood and Second on the list. She said the city is being awarded a Safe Routes to School grant, matched by Transportation Benefit District taxpayer funds, to bring walking and cycling improvements to the intersection, which is near Michael T. Simmons Elementary.
There will be a modified roundabout in the future, along with shorter crossing distances for pedestrians and cyclists. Bike lanes will also be installed.
Lacey
The City of Lacey is getting right to tackling a few of its problem intersections. Poll participants identified Carpenter Road and Britton Parkway, as well as Martin and Marvin roads as needing improvements. Martin Hoppe, engineering and transportation manager for Lacey, said construction is starting on the first one early next year.
Hoppe said the city recently completed the design for, and purchase of the right of way, for a single-lane roundabout at Carpenter and Britton. And College Street will be extended from Sixth Avenue to 15th Avenue, which turns into Britton Parkway heading east. Construction on that project is expected to begin late next year.
City engineer Aubrey Collier said there are future plans to install three new roundabouts on College Street. The first will be at Seventh Avenue Southeast, then 16th Avenue Southeast, then 29th Avenue Southeast. She said it will be several years before construction happens.
Hoppe said improvements to College Street were identified in a corridor study nearly 20 years ago. He said it’s difficult to make any left turns off the road, and people have been asking for the city to address it for years.
Lacey was the first city in Washington to have a multi-lane roundabout, Collier said, and people have come to love them. Hoppe said he never has anyone calling him asking for a stoplight anymore, only roundabouts.
Survey respondents said most of the best intersections in Lacey are the ones with roundabouts. Others were those with more predictable layouts, like four-way stops with single lanes.
Hoppe said Lacey officials have been working with Olympia and Thurston County to figure out improvements to Martin Way. On the Lacey side, the intersection with Marvin Road has had some issues. But the City of Lacey recently annexed Marvin and Third and Marvin and Steilacoom in hopes of interconnecting the road system and ultimately re-timing the stoplights to make it easier to travel through.
Collier said there’s a number of smaller projects in the works, too. The city is installing a flashing beacon crossing on Ruddell Road near Hazelwood Lane by the end of the year. And there are annual paving projects funded by the Transportation Benefit District. The newest to come is Rainier Road and 66th and the accompanying roundabout.
How to get involved
Each jurisdiction has lengthy planning processes for what the cities will look like 20 years into the future. And there are ample opportunities for the public to have their voices heard and get problem intersections in their neighborhood fixed.
Collier said the City of Lacey will be starting its updating process for the 10-year Transportation Comprehensive Plan this fall. The updating process will likely last a year or two, she said, and the city will be advertising how to get involved.
Tumwater, too, will be updating its Transportation Master Plan this fall as part of its Comprehensive Plan. The Transportation Improvement Plan was recently adopted by the City Council, which includes $80 million of projects for the next six years. There will be a public engagement process for the fall update.
Michelle Swanson said Olympia’s 20-year Comprehensive Plan was last updated in 2014. An update is due in 2025 for the 2045 plan. And there’s the city’s Transportation Master Plan, which describes how Olympia will implement its vision for complete streets that move not only cars, but people.
There are several ways to get involved in the conversation through Thurston County’s Community Planning and Economic Development webpage.
This story was originally published July 16, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
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