Appleway funds to be returned
The Spokane Regional Transportation Council board opted Thursday to return $4.2 million that the state set aside to complete the Sprague-Appleway couplet in Spokane Valley.
If traffic studies can prove a need to extend Appleway, the board earmarked federal money for the project that comes with looser deadlines. But there is no guarantee the couplet will ever be extended.
Construction had been scheduled to start as early as next year. City Manager Dave Mercier said the change won’t alter the city’s timeline for Sprague Avenue revitalization and other plans. The city has budgeted $250,000 for a Sprague corridor study that is scheduled to be done early next year.
Federal and state money for the couplet are contingent upon predictions of what traffic will look like in the Valley in coming years. Spokane Valley has taken issue with earlier SRTC traffic models that don’t support extending the couplet.
For Spokane Valley to receive any outside money, it has to prove there is a “purpose and need” for adding the new lanes that justifies the pollution they will create.
“This really has to do with following the National Environmental Policy Act process,” SRTC transportation manager Glenn Miles said at a meeting Thursday. “There is no project right now.”
A deadline to complete the environmental study on couplet completion passed in December 2004, and the state Transportation Improvement Board granted the city an extension until July.
Now it is looking like the city and SRTC will not have the study and other project planning in place by then.
The environmental study, including results of the traffic modeling, will have to be approved by federal agencies before construction begins.
Federal and state road money for Spokane County is distributed by SRTC. Board members, which include city and county elected officials and representatives from transportation agencies, opted to set aside federal road money for the couplet because federal requirements will allow more time for the study.
In 2000, Spokane County completed the first phase of the couplet, which currently stops at University. If approved, the second phase would extend Appleway to Evergreen Road. Eventually it would follow an abandoned railroad bed to reconnect to Sprague near South Tschirley Road in Greenacres.