Traffic in and around the Lilac City hasn’t just increased sharply since a precipitous drop immediately after Inslee announced a stay-home order in March, it’s also up from 2019, when – assuming you can remember such a halcyon time – there was no pandemic.

After months of uncertainty due to funding issues, plans are finally moving forward for two large road improvement projects in Liberty Lake – the widening of the Harvard Road Interstate-90 overpass and the addition of a Henry Road I-90 overpass.

By a two-to-one margin, Kootenai County voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have imposed a local vehicle registration fee to pay for a slate of transportation projects to improve and expand the overwhelmed area road network.

A recent study identified nearly $19 million work of additional work – including constructing new roundabouts at the road’s intersections with Sprague, 4th and 8th avenues and widening the street to five lanes from Mission Avenue to the south city limits – that should be completed by 2040 to keep up with projected growth.

Eerie skies abruptly covered much of the Spokane area Friday afternoon as the National Weather Service issued an advisory for a dust and ash storm expected to cause “hazardous driving conditions.”

Margo Hill doesn’t want people to forget the mid-19th century history of what is now the city of Spokane and what was then Spokane tribal territory. She wants them to know its brutal truth.

Researchers have found that permitting cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs increases the flow of traffic and actually protects both motorists and those on bicycles. The law went into effect this month in Washington.

The news that the Washington Supreme Court ruled the $30 car tab initiative unconstitutional was met with a somewhat tepid response by transportation agencies last week. While the ruling preserves some transportation funding, tax revenues are down due to the pandemic, adding another obstacle to a system that planners say is underfunded to meet the needs of the public.

A head-on collision at the intersection of North Division Street and West Francis Avenue sent three people to the hospital Thursday morning, the Spokane Police Department said. About an hour after the initial crash, a pedestrian was hit in the partially closed intersection, sustaining minor injuries.