Valley Council plans website for train-related projects

Drive around Spokane Valley for a bit and chances are you’ll have to stop at a railroad crossing and wait for a train.

Spokane Valley has identified 57 high-priority crossings to be targeted for improvement – a project also known as Bridging the Valley.

The large number of crossings makes it nearly impossible to avoid the trains, and the lines of waiting motorists can lead to traffic backups and occasional driver blowups.

Another train-related issue is the blowing of whistles and honking of horns at all hours of the day. Conductors use whistles and horns to communicate with railroad staff on the ground, and before they enter a crossing. What’s a melancholy sound to some drives others up the wall and down to city hall asking for quiet zones.

At last week’s Spokane Valley City Council meeting, quiet zones came up again and city manager Mike Jackson suggested that perhaps staff should put together a website with all train related information, maps, proposals and studies that the city has accumulated.

“This is a topic that’s come up a number of times over the years,” Jackson said. “Putting all the information in one spot is pretty basic, but it will help the public see what we are talking about.”

It would also make it easier to approach the railroads as solutions are being debated, Jackson added.

Mayor Dean Grafos supported the idea, saying the city needs to look at the train issue one more time.

“We need to deal with it,” Grafos said.

One busy railroad crossing is at Barker Road near Trent Avenue. About 50 trains travel through that crossing every day and so do more than 4,000 vehicles.

Kyle Lane delivers auto parts for Gus Johnson Ford and he said he sometimes spends 10 or 15 minutes waiting for a train to clear a crossing somewhere in Spokane Valley.

“Especially on Argonne,” Lane said. “There, the trains often sit and then they back up before they pull forward.”

Lane said he takes the railroad crossings into consideration when he plans his route, but he believes the investment in bridges and underpasses would be worth it because traffic would run a lot smoother.

“Or maybe they could put up signs so you have a chance to go another way,” Lane said. “That would be cheaper than building bridges.”

To others, the cost of “Bridging the Valley” makes it a moot point.

“I think it would be a waste of money,” said Debbie Benton-Baker, who lives in Tum Tum but grew up in the Valley and drives there many times a week. “There are roads that need to be fixed and street lights that need to be put in place, instead of bridges for the train.”

And Bridging the Valley is not cheap.

The proposed Barker Road Grade Separation Project – which would construct a bridge over the BNSF tracks and add ramps for easy access to Trent Avenue, plus pedestrian and bicycle lanes – would cost $29.2 million.

The cost would be divided between Spokane Valley, Washington State, federal funding and BNSF, with federal funding paying the largest share. However, the project didn’t make the recently adopted state budget, Jackson said, putting it on hold while Spokane Valley applies for another round of funding.

“I know it sounds to people like we are having the same conversation over and over,” Jackson said.

Putting together a website for all the Bridging the Valley-related information will also allow the city to establish some objectives and work toward them.

“We have faced bigger obstacles; we will get through this,” Jackson said.