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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Comprehensive Plan denotes truck routes

The Spokesman-Review

Hoping to curb some of the wear and tear on Spokane Valley roads, the city’s new Comprehensive Plan outlines several truck routes through town.

At a meeting Monday, most of them looked OK to the City Council, but it removed much of the Sprague-Appleway couplet from one proposed route.

“I really don’t want to have heavy truck traffic going through the middle of our downtown,” Councilman Rich Munson said.

He raised the issue following a public hearing on the plan held at the Spokane Valley Church of the Nazarene Monday night.

A map in the plan’s transportation chapter designates six north-south streets as truck routes, as well as Trent Avenue, Broadway Avenue from Havana Street to Park Road , East Montgomery, and parts of Sprague and Appleway.

“We really haven’t made a decision yet as to what we want that corridor to look like,” Munson said of Sprague.

The Planning Commission’s draft of the 20-year plan outlines a proposed downtown in the area of the former U-City Mall, which the couplet presently straddles.

Some on the council questioned the point of having truck routes at all, given that so many trucks have to make deliveries to the car dealerships and other businesses along Sprague anyway.

“Nobody who is going to go from Seattle to Philadelphia is going to pull off I-90 and go down Sprague,” Councilman Mike Flanigan said.

For Councilman Steve Taylor, it was more a question of engineering.

“Why would we want to restrict traffic on one of our highest-capacity roads?” he asked.

The council discussed taking Sprague and Appleway off of the truck-route map completely, but some raised concerns about north-south freight traffic being able to adequately access I-90.

A compromise was reached by excluding the section of Sprague and Appleway between Sullivan Road and Argonne Road. The revised route remained in the plan after further discussion at the council’s regular meeting Tuesday.