PORT ANGELES — City officials attempted to dampen concerns that Race Street and Lauridsen Boulevard would be turned into an alternate truck route that avoids downtown — despite fears that the city comprehensive plan identifies the roads for exactly that.
That’s not happening now or even in the next few years, city officials said this week.
But worried residents raised the issue at a City Council workshop and public hearing Tuesday, when City Engineer Mike Puntenney unveiled the 2012-2018 capital improvement plan and transportation improvement program, a compendium of $229 million in projects that includes $4.7 million to replace the Lauridsen Boulevard Bridge in 2013.
The public hearing was continued to the City Council’s 6 p.m. June 19 meeting.
Citizens fretted that replacing the bridge at Lauridsen Boulevard and Race Street is a precursor project for a truck route that would disrupt the heavily residential, two-lane byways, which are bordered by Jefferson School, Civic Field, the Port Angeles Library, the city skate park and the Dream Playground.
“The comprehensive plan identifies it for that purpose,” Scott Schaffer told the council.
“That was to many of us a mystery,” he said, adding that he did not understand “how that becomes a solution to the problem of trucks downtown without any of us knowing about it.”
He said there had been no public process to identify the streets as a truck route.
“This could have a profound effect on the neighbors, and the neighbors need to be involved in identifying the route and weigh the pros and cons,” Schaffer said.
“I’m not sure this is the trade-off we want to make.”
The city “should facilitate the development of a cross-town truck route with improvements, which provide full access to [state Highway] 117 to and from U.S. [Highway] 101, and improvements to the Lauridsen Boulevard Bridge over Peabody Creek and the intersections of Lauridsen Boulevard at Race Street and U.S. 101,” according to the comprehensive plan.
“The city should facilitate an additional route for local cross-town traffic along Lauridsen Boulevard across White’s Creek ultimately connecting with U.S. 101.”
An alternative, cross-town route study is not funded for 2013, city Community and Economic Development Director Nathan West said.
It’s a Growth Management Act requirement that the city forecast its traffic needs and apply different transportation models throughout the city, West said, adding that public meetings later this fall will address those needs.
Acting City Manager Dan McKeen added that “it’s unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future, that this would be coming back to the council in the next two or five years,” adding that he has received numerous emails about the alternative route and heard “a lot of concern.”
West said the Port Angeles Forward Committee around 2008 had “strongly recommended moving forward with the alternate route, which was followed by city staff incorporating it into the comprehensive plan.”
The bridge approach to Race Street at the busy traffic-light intersection of Race and Lauridsen, near Peninsula College and the Olympic National Park visitor center, will be widened to accommodate the turning radius of all vehicles, Puntenney said.
A roundabout also is in “the concept-study stage” for the Lauridsen Boulevard-Lincoln Street intersection about a mile west of the Lauridsen Bridge, Puntenney said, adding that the roundabout is more related to existing safety issues than an alternative truck route.
That project is “years away” from being built — if it is even built, he said.
But Councilman Dan Di Guilio warned that the council should “be mindful” of an alternative truck route that might eventually be built “by default” with elements designed to accept larger vehicles — such as a new bridge and roundabout — despite issues raised by citizens at Tuesday’s public hearing.
The city’s 2012-2018 capital improvement plan and transportation improvement program are available at http://tinyurl.com/8a7wwh4.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
