Valley Couplet A Good First Step
Traffic-jam veterans know the experience. A tingle of expectation, just before the congestion actually does break up, that it’s about to.
In the Spokane Valley there are puffs of hope, like burps of diesel smoke from an idled semi coming back to life, that the rush-hour coagulation along Sprague and a series of Interstate 90 off-ramps may someday unclot.
Spokane County commissioners have given their blessing to a one-way couplet using Sprague and portions of First and Second avenues, between University and Thierman.
Actual construction work isn’t expected to begin until 2000, and the four-mile link won’t ease all of the Valley’s congestion nightmare, but the county appears to have got past a major roadblock.
That roadblock consisted of an unbeatable lineup of foes who, for mixed reasons, faulted the earlier proposal for a South Valley Arterial - a new, limited-access thoroughfare that would have been farther south and would have diverted many thousands of cars a day off Interstate 90 and Sprague.
Valley businesses had filed a suit to halt the South Valley Arterial because it would take traffic, and therefore customers, away from the Sprague corridor.
Environmentalists objected to the impact construction would have on the treasured Dishman Hills Natural Area.
Valley Fire District 1 said the limited access route, with cross streets only about every mile, seriously impaired their response to emergencies south of the new highway.
Facing opposition like that, the South Valley Arterial was just a dead-end street.
The couplet, however, keeps traffic in the established business area, steers clear of the Dishman Hills and gives Fire District 1 crews many more points to cross. And, at an estimated $16 million, the couplet is about $4 million cheaper than the first proposal.
But motorists who now bog down in the paralysis on Sprague, or read “War and Peace” during the nightly pause at the Pines Interchange, will want to know, above all, will it do the trick.
It will, if malls and apartment construction don’t spawn new traffic faster than state and county traffic engineers can alleviate the old.
But for evidence of the couplet’s effectiveness, drive the Ruby-Division alignment in North Spokane. Once a nightmare, now a dream.
As with that project, though, the Valley couplet is only half a step. County commissioners acknowledge that the project ultimately should extend at least to Appleway near Liberty Lake.
For now, it’s just a relief to see that diesel, 50 vehicles ahead, finally start to crawl.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board