Valley Couplet Opposed

A recent article titled “Couplet a compromise traffic solution” (Feb. 22, Valley Voice) fosters the false notion that there is no connection between transportation and land use planning, and that by building more roads county engineers can solve the problem of traffic congestion in the Spokane Valley.

I invite readers to consider what the couplet will look like 10 years after it is built, assuming this corridor will be rezoned for commercial and business uses. It will look just like what we now have along Sprague, Pines, Sullivan, and Division.

If county engineers and planners have their way, the Valley Couplet will have all the aesthetic charm of low-density commercial strip development: cheap, big box stores, garish fast food drive-through businesses, acres of asphalt parking lots, huge internally lit signs, stop and go traffic, air pollution, and visual blight. If you want to know what the final build-out scenario will look like, visit Orange County, Calif.

The couplet will simply make the problem of traffic congestion worse, not better. The type of development that it will foster ensures that all citizens in the heart of the Spokane Valley will be forced to drive their personal autos for every little need. It’s as if Spokane County engineers are intent on creating more transportation problems for the doubtful pleasures of solving them.

The Board of County Commissioners will soon decide on the proposal to spend $16 million dollars of public money to build a facility along a valuable public right of way for the sole purpose of accommodating the demand for single-occupancy automobiles. This is a wasteful and shortsighted use of public resources because some day we will need light rail; but when that day comes, the cost to retrofit around commercial strip development will be astronomical.

Instead of building the couplet, with all its transportation, aesthetic, and social problems, commissioners might instead consider a comprehensive transportation/land use corridor design, similar to what other progressive communities such as Portland have built.

Good urban design can reduce automobile dependency, it can provide low and moderate income housing close to public transportation, and it can require the development of public space that is beautiful, enduring, and something to be proud of. This is consistent with the goals of the Growth Management Act (the couplet is not). Moreover, good urban design promotes economic development that attracts high quality investment.

The old Milwaukee/Union Pacific railroad right of way and the relatively undeveloped land that borders it is too valuable a public asset to waste on yet another commercial strip development.

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