Will all roads lead past Spokane?

Downtown Spokane businesses can be forgiven for feeling like they are trapped on the off-ramp to heck. With the 2005 road construction season not yet over, they face the likelihood that 2006 and 2007 projects will continue to impede customers looking for a room, a burger, or a basketball tournament.

This summer, businesses on Third Avenue between Maple and Division suffered as that battered boulevard received a long overdue overhaul. Business at some restaurants fell 40 percent or more. Work on major north-south arteries also discouraged travel into the downtown core. Those projects are complete, at least for this construction season, with so-far excellent results.

Now comes the Washington Department of Transportation with plans to resurface the Interstate 90 viaduct from Division to Maple. The work will require ramp closures at Browne, Lincoln and Monroe. The eastbound ramp at Maple will remain open, but the westbound ramp will be closed. The highway itself will remain open, but the six lanes of traffic will be squeezed down to four.

Department officials make no bones about the obvious: the project is going to be a bear. Case in point, the westbound Maple ramp closure. If you miss the Division exit, your next opportunity to exit comes on the far side of Latah Creek. Many drivers, native and non-native alike, will not bother to backtrack.

The Downtown Spokane Partnership has lobbied hard for continued use of westbound Maple, in 2006 at least, and the department has not entirely ruled that out. The danger, according to assistant Project Engineer Bob Blegen, is backups at the traffic light on Maple that stack vehicles back into through traffic. The temporary lanes will be only 10.5 feet wide as opposed to the usual 12, and there will be no shoulder. Hence, no room to maneuver. Also, the barriers set up to separate eastbound from westbound traffic will be fixed, not movable, which restricts a contractor’s ability to make adjustments like those possible during I-90 work in the Spokane Valley.

The department is not deliberately piling on businesses after a rough 2005. The viaduct work was not supposed to be funded so soon, but hiccups in reconstruction of the Hood Canal Bridge made available the $15 million the viaduct work will take. The department’s Eastern Region, wisely, seized the opportunity. It’s not often we pick the West Side’s pocket.

The viaduct’s woes are the result of two decades of pounding by as many as 100,000 vehicles per day. Grooves worn into the cement by studded tires – Blegen calls them “roto-hammers” – has exposed expansion joints to the impact of every oncoming tire. When hit, the joints rock, which jars and eventually breaks the concrete around them. DOT slides show a band of fractured cement along each side of the steel joints.

Downtown Spokane Partnership President Marty Dickinson agrees the work needs to be done, but members are concerned serial road projects will strand their businesses.

“You don’t want to give the overwhelming sense it’s hard to get to downtown,” she says.

Although the viaduct project first surfaced in February, it was not until summer that the department confirmed its plans. Dickinson faults the department’s early efforts to take comment from businesses, the South Hill hospitals and schools, but says a lot has been accomplished in recent weeks.

The major concern is signage. The sooner westbound drivers can be made aware of the blocked exits, the more time they will have to choose the Second Avenue or Hamilton Street exits as alternative routes into downtown. If officials could beg local drivers to use those ramps and leave Division to visitors, they would.

The department has also worked closely with the hospitals on signs and other planning for emergencies. The starting date was moved back to May 14 to avoid snarling Bloomsday traffic, and the later startup also minimizes disruption around Lewis and Clark High School and Spokane Transit Authority service to Eastern Washington University.

Blegen says the department may try to move the date back a little further to accommodate the Lilac Parade. There’s just no getting around Hoopfest weekend in late June. Once started, work will continue round-the-clock, seven days a week, to complete the job as quickly as possible. When the first year’s work on the eastbound lanes is completed, the highway will be returned to its normal configuration until work on the westbound side begins in spring 2007.

The department, together with the city, is also working on timing stoplights to ease as much as possible the east-west traffic flow on Second and Third. Between four and seven cameras will be added to improve traffic monitoring. Adjustments will continue as the project gets rolling.

Blegen says the department will continue, as well, to fine tune the project’s particulars in partnership with the city and business community. That’s good. Communication, as owners of businesses along Third will attest, matters tremendously. Many appreciated the attention given their concerns by the contractor on that job, Eller Corp.

Spokane drivers have been a resilient bunch the last few years. But business owners have really had to show patience. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s the likelihood that more traffic will be shunted by the restaurants on Second and Third, which took the brunt this year.

Maybe 2007 will be the year we can again get here from here. After that, don’t mess with access.