Spokane gets a wake-up call on U.S. 195

If the letter from the Washington State Department of Transportation to Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs was meant as a wake-up call, mission accomplished. WSDOT Eastern Region Administrator Mike Gribner warned in the Feb. 13 letter that if the city didn’t take drastic steps to deal with the safety and transportation management crisis along the U.S. Highway 195 corridor, WSDOT would.

“In the absence of a temporary moratorium on development and a plan put forth to address it in the very near future, WSDOT will be forced to take safety and traffic control measures to address the safety of our facility,” Gribner wrote.

Those measures could include removing median breaks at several key intersections – which would hinder local traffic flow – and adjustments to the ramp meter allowing traffic from U.S. 195 onto Interstate 90.

City leaders are aware of the problem and share WSDOT’s concerns. But this letter should help focus their attention and bring a new urgency to finding solutions.

Many plans have been contemplated over the years to forestall traffic problems – from a 1999 study advocating additional interchanges and frontage roads to a new study in the works by the Spokane Regional Transportation Council. But few of those plans ever became reality.

The result is an unsafe mess. Cars back up for 20 blocks or more trying to get on I-90. Accidents at unsafe interchanges are far too common. If Spokane allows growth in the area to continue without mitigating those problems now, dealing with them in the future will be more expensive. It’s almost always better to implement transportation safety measures at the outset rather than put them off.

Yet any solutions will come with a hefty price tag – far too hefty for Spokane to absorb itself, especially since passage of Initiate 976 severely limited local governments’ ability to raise money through car tabs. The initiative also slashed the state pool of transportation dollars that might fund road projects.

State legislators must fill the huge transportation funding hole. Good roads are an absolutely vital contributor to a healthy business climate and economy. While there may be much waste in state spending, maintaining adequate transportation infrastructure is an essential state function. Voters made the wrong call when they approved I-976, sacrificing a steady stream of funding for transportation projects ($4 billion over six years) to save tens of dollars on car tag fees. Those funds are being drained from a system already facing a $10 billion maintenance backlog.

The money lost to I-976 will have to be replaced somehow if situations like the overcrowded and hazardous U.S. 195 corridor are going to be improved. Even anti-tax Republican legislators might need to open themselves to the possibility of an increase to the gas tax, already the third highest in the nation, or other revenue sources. City leaders also will have to contemplate finding new ways to make up the lost funding. They have already begun looking into some, but sufficient options are few, and most would require voter buy-in.

The U.S. 195 situation can’t be entirely, or even mostly, blamed on I-976, of course. It’s been developing as an issue for decades, as Gribner tried to emphasize by including a thumb drive filled with documents outlining the history of the area since the city annexed land there and extended sewer infrastructure to allow for more development. He noted that Spokane needs to take a leadership role in building the public and political support needed to achieve funding for a tangible and achievable plan. This is true and becoming ever more urgent.

One immediate concern is whether Eastern Washington will continue to have a voice on the Washington State Transportation Commission. Joe Tortorelli has ably represented Spokane County and all of Eastern Washington on the commission for nearly a decade, but his term ends in June. It’s imperative that Gov. Jay Inslee appoint a successor who can fairly claim to represent the eastern edge of the state.

The city needed a wake-up call for U.S. 195. It got one.