Sidewalks: Need Is There, Money Isn’T

After the dust settles from construction in July, Mission Avenue will still be the road where the sidewalks end.

A county sewer project will tear up Mission Avenue between Woodruff and Pines this summer. It will widen the shoulders by several feet but will not include filling in the gaps with sidewalks.

Most of the gaps are several blocks long.

The stretch of Mission in front of the park might get sidewalks when the new swimming pool is built in the summer of 2001, but there’s no guarantee, said Randy Johnson, recreation program manager for the Spokane County Parks and Recreation Department.

Johnson said those at the public meetings on the pool proposal seemed to think sidewalks would be nice, but didn’t want them to take money away from the pool.

“People seem to want the most bang for their buck in the water,” he said.

Sidewalks would have doubled or tripled the cost of the $800,000 road project along Mission, said assistant county engineer Ross Kelley.

“I would be willing to pay for a sidewalk in front of my house,” said Maria Gardella, who has lived on Mission near University for six years.

The short stretches of Mission Avenue which have sidewalks feel safer, she said.

Sandra Stevens, whose grandchildren live at Mission and Glenn Road, said she was surprised the county didn’t have plans to put in sidewalks along Mission.

“We need sidewalks,” she said. “A lot of kids walk to school and ride bikes. They (sidewalks) keep kids from getting (hit).”

All new roads built in the county have accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists included in the plans, but the county doesn’t have funding to retro-fit every road with sidewalks, said Kelley.

The county decided that University Road, which gets sewers later this summer, will get a center turn lane, curbs and sidewalks.

Evergreen Avenue, which will go from two to five lanes, also will have sidewalks and bike lanes.

“We only have funding to do a few (sidewalk) projects each year,” he said. “We’re building the ones with a higher priority.”

The traffic counts on Mission and University were both roughly 8,000 cars a day. It’s estimated that more than 20,000 cars a day will travel Evergreen each day once the widening and link to Interstate 90 is completed in November.

Wilfred Moss has lived at the corner of Mission and University for 50 years. He remembers the day when Mission Avenue was a dirt road with two or three cars passing by each day.

Now, the intersection is so busy, it’s hard for the kids who wait for the bus there to cross the street, he said.

Moss said he’d like to see the county eventually put in a light at the corner.

“When we moved here we thought we were out in the country, and now we’re in the city,” he said of the changes.