Work underway to install more ‘Michigan lefts’ in Latah Valley

Sat., March 28, 2026

This view looking south on U.S. Highway 195 shows the busy unmarked Meadowland Road crossing, where commuters are often crossing two or more lanes of traffic. A new J-turn at the intersection will stop left turns onto the busy highway. (Jesse Tinsley/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW)

By Emry Dinman emryd@spokesman.com (509) 459-5472

A slice of Michigan is coming to southwest Spokane as crews work to install a second “J-turn” on U.S. Highway 195, this time along the intersection with Meadowlane Road south of the Eagle Ridge development and the Qualchan golf course.

Construction began Monday and is expected to wrap before the end of July.

Spokane first introduced the road design, also known as the “Michigan left” due to its early adoption by that state’s highway agency, to the highway’s intersection with Thorpe Road in 2019.

Elsewhere on the highway, drivers trying to turn left have to hold their breath and cross two lanes of highway-speed traffic before turning and merging. Installing a J-turn entails blocking off the road to left turns, forcing drivers to turn right, merge into the left lane, and then make a U-turn from a dedicated turning lane that allows drivers to more safely slow down.

On Monday, the city of Spokane began construction of two J-turns, one in each direction, to allow safer access to the highway from Meadowlane. The project will include acceleration lanes, allowing turning drivers to more safely get back up to highway speeds, as well as a new sidewalk along Meadowlane between Eagle Ridge Boulevard and Turner Avenue.

“One of the main things is those acceleration and deceleration lanes, which allows that extra space to slow down at a more appropriate pace,” said Kirstin Davis, Spokane Public Works spokeswoman.

Seven years ago, the city pointed to a string of collisions at the Thorpe-195 intersection, some of them fatal, as it built the corridor’s first J-turn. The Meadowlane intersection was the location of nine crashes in 2024, seven in 2025, and one so far this year, according to Washington State Department of Transportation data.

For some, the project has been a long time coming for a highway already strained by existing growth.

Last spring, as tensions between WSDOT and the city mounted over the strain that development in west Spokane was having on an insufficiently improved U.S. 195, agency spokesman Ryan Overton pointed to the Meadowlane intersection as evidence.

“Lastly, the Meadowlane J-Turn comes how many decades after the Eagle Ridge community was constructed?” Overton wrote in a March 2025 email. “It’s taken nearly 20 years for any congestion/safety mitigation by the city at this location.”

The city and the state transportation agency have since improved their working relationship on the corridor, agreeing to a number of infrastructure improvements necessary to make local access to the highway safer.

Elsewhere along the corridor, the city is slowly making progress on the Thorpe Road tunnels under the BNSF Railway line and Fish Lake Trail, for example, which WSDOT previously warned was a connection to U.S. 195 likely to fail as the local population increased. Officials were recently presented with a few alternatives for addressing the narrow tunnel, including possibly digging a new tunnel nearby – though funding hasn’t been secured yet for any of the proposed options, estimated to cost upwards of $55 million.

“That corridor has definitely been a priority for a few years,” Davis said.