Couplet may hit funding problem

Streets can have “S” curves and “U” turns, but it’s a “T” in one Spokane Valley road that has added to an ongoing controversy during the last four years.

Appleway Boulevard, the southern leg of the Sprague-Appleway couplet, ends at University Road where drivers must turn either left or right. Straight ahead, drivers can see an unused right of way.

Some citizens praise the couplet for easing traffic congestion through Spokane Valley. They want the city to extend Appleway two miles east, turning that “T” into a through road.

Some blame the two one-way roads for the demise of several stores that line them, and they don’t want to subject business owners east of University to the same drop in traffic others have suffered.

But as the debate has raged, one question has attracted little attention: Would the couplet extension be eligible for state funds needed to build it?

Consultants told the Spokane Valley City Council last week that if it doesn’t transform Sprague from a sprawling retail corridor to a destination that attracts more shoppers, the city probably couldn’t sell the extension project to the state. There might not be enough traffic now for the state to justify spending the money

“You will have to rejustify the couplet based on purpose and function, based on congestion,” said Terry Moore, of ECONorthwest, a consultant hired by the city to study the economics of the couplet. “If you don’t change the land use in the area, we don’t think you’ll be able to justify the need.”

For the project to be considered for state money, the Spokane Regional Transportation Council (SRTC) must put it on what’s called the Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP).

“The reason the Valley Corridor Project has not been included in the MTP to date remains the same today as it was in 1998,” SRTC Transportation Manager Glenn Miles wrote in an Aug. 12 letter obtained by The Spokesman-Review through a public records request. “There was a lack of sufficient analysis to demonstrate a purpose and need for the project.”

The state has $4.2 million set aside for the work, but that money might never reach Spokane Valley.

“Until such time as the purpose and need has been established and quantified, we’re not in the position to justify putting (the extension project) into the Metropolitan Transportation Plan,” he said.

Spokane County originally intended for the couplet to reach Barker Road in the east, county engineer Ross Kelley said. The state granted only enough money to go to Pines Road, but the Pines-Sprague intersection was too overloaded to handle the couplet’s abrupt ending. University could, so when the couplet was built in 2000, it stopped there.

But much has happened since then.

Spokane Valley incorporated, putting the roadway in the new city’s hands.

Other east-west routes, such as Interstate 90 and 16th and 32nd avenues, have been or are being improved, possibly reducing the dependence on the couplet.

And Sullivan Road, a north-south street that has easy access from I-90, has evolved into a thriving retail corridor.

The city can’t rely on the old studies – or a simple desire – to justify extending the couplet, Miles said. It has to complete an environmental assessment and new traffic modeling, work that’s under way now.

In July, the county counted almost 22,400 eastbound vehicles at the Appleway-Thierman intersection and about 23,300 westbound vehicles at the Sprague-Thierman intersection, Kelley said. Combined, that’s almost 12,000 more vehicles than traveled east and west at the Sprague-Thierman intersection in the late 1990s.

But the traffic counts drop farther east along the corridor, Kelley said. At the Sprague-Pines intersection, the county counted 29,400 vehicles in July, up only about 500 over the late 1990s.

The Washington state Transportation Improvement Board is the body that would allocate the $4.2 million, if SRTC gives the project its nod. If the extension is rejected, the city could change the scope of its work and ask the board to OK that instead, but any new plan still would need to accomplish the couplet’s original goals.

If the city decides to abandon the work, it will lose the money.

The possibility that the couplet could continue as an unfinished roadway baffles Jerry Quinn. He’s part of a business group that has placed signs in Spokane Valley – one quite visibly at the “T” near University City Shopping Center – that read “Finish the Job.”

“If the state decides that I-90 is more important than the Appleway couplet, I’ve got to question what the purpose of the couplet was in the first place since it ends so disastrously at U-City,” Quinn said.

Quinn said companies have spent money positioning their buildings to face customers on the couplet. More business owners, including landowners along the unused right of way who could benefit from the extension, are awaiting a decision, he said.

“It was obviously intended to go beyond where it ends,” Quinn said. “There are piles of dirt and Jersey barriers that imply that it will go beyond there.”