Possible road plan adjustments meet opposition

Moses Lake’s Transportation Improvement Program, with updates of city needs sent to regional, state and federal planning organizations each June, is a bit more complicated this year.

Now part of the overarching updated comprehensive plan, the Transportation Improvement Program update is a six-year plan, including new pavement, intersection studies, several road rechannelization propositions, new trails and more.

Before setting a date for the annual public hearing for the update, it hit snags at the Moses Lake City Council meeting May 25, when some council members took issue with the “road diets,” efforts to reduce lanes, slow down traffic or revise existing roads, which were presented.

According to the Transportation Improvement Program, such diets are proposed on Valley Road, Division Street, Fourth Avenue, Third Avenue, Hill Avenue and Fifth Avenue.

“I’m not exactly opposed to the concept,” said council member Karen Liebrecht. “I think the streets that were chosen are perhaps not the wisest. They’re pretty busy areas.”

Council should have a study session to discuss specifics before the public hearing and before funding is allocated, she said.

Revisiting the proposed diets is a good idea, said City Manager Allison Williams, but part of the funding requirement is multimodal transportation, so that must be taken into consideration. Through the comprehensive plan survey process, members of the community have requested these options, she said.

“It’s important that we listen to all voices in our community and recognize that there are many new residents here who are coming from places where they consider this their quality of life to have access to bicycle or pedestrian-safe modes of travel,” she said.

Bicycle lanes are hardly used, said council member Dean Hankins, so replacing car lanes with bicycle lanes isn’t efficient and will irritate drivers. The replacement also is not the best use of funding, Hankins said.

“To have a bike lane is a great idea. To take away lanes of traffic on a busy road to make them,” he said. “I don’t care if that has anything to do with getting funds or not. We’re not here to give funds to that. We’re here to save that for people in this community to use in the best way, and I don’t think stopping traffic on a busy road or slowing it down is the best way to use that.”

Bicycle lanes are not the most important aspect of this discussion, said city engineer Richard Law. Studies show that road diets slow down traffic and reduce collisions.

Four years ago, Moses Lake conducted a study on Division Street and found that road diets tremendously reduced the average speed, he said.

“Bless the rights of our forefathers that gave us these nice wide rights of way downtown,” he said. “They put in these four-lane streets anticipating growth.”

However, based on state and national city design manuals, the amount of traffic Moses Lake sees does not warrant the unsafety of the number of lanes, he said. Stratford Road is the only street in town that sees more than 10,000 cars a day.

“We’re not going to have total safety,” Hankins said. “Not in this life. It’s not going to happen … You specifically said (a previous road diet was designed) to make it uncomfortable to drive in those developments so people will slow down. That is Big Brother, way overboard. I disagree with it totally. I do not think we need to make everybody 100% safe all the time. You can’t do it. So efficiency has to be in here somewhere. Efficiency of moving traffic. Efficiency of how irritating it is to drive on that road. So, I disagree with you.”

Judy Madewell, a former member of the planning commission, used to live near Valley Road, she said, where traffic is “nuts.”

When such diets are made, drivers typically find alternate routes where they can go fast, she said. Speed bumps are not an option, as they hinder emergency vehicles.

“Please don’t do this,” she said. “Figure out something else, but this is not how you want to handle this.”

To make the best decision, council should wait until the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Comprehensive Plan surveys have been returned in coming weeks, to give statistically accurate, non-anecdotal input of what the community wants, Williams said.

“We have heard from many of our citizens who are looking for a different complexion and built environment in Moses Lake, and I would like for us to do a work session and have it based on seeing what the science is,” she said. “We have engineering science that speaks to the design of communities and designs of roadways and I would just encourage us to just take a pause and let us bring back a presentation that relates to the process that we’ve been going through also, so we make sure that as a council and as a city we need to reflect the desires of what our community wants to see in the future.”

Time is an additional factor, Law said.

The roads are to be adjusted in conjunction with the normal chipsealing and maintenance cycle, he said. Because of this, they can make the adjustments for virtually no added cost.

Making lane adjustments outside of the maintenance cycle will require added funds, he said, or the city will have to wait another 7-10 years to do it without additional cost.

City staff will prepare a road diet presentation, Williams said, to be given to council after the June 22 public hearing on the Transportation Improvement Program.