[Transit] Fwd: [TRUST Riders] Check out a new state law upgrading the standards the DOT will use to coordinate adding bike and pedestrian facilities when basic maintenance is planned.

[Saunatina Sanchez]

Has anyone in this group been keeping up with this topic? Feels like a good
tool to use in our advocacy kits.

Thanks,
S.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Marie Venner <marie at vennerconsulting.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 5, 2023 at 10:51 AM
Subject: [TRUST Riders] Check out a new state law upgrading the standards
the DOT will use to coordinate adding bike and pedestrian facilities when
basic maintenance is planned.
To: Shoshana Lew <shoshana.lew at state.co.us>, Rob Toftness <rob at nosquish.com>,
<sbrasch at cpr.org>, sb200-grassroots <sb200-grassroots at googlegroups.com>,
Faith Winter <faithwinter at gmail.com>, Matthew Metz <Matthew at coltura.org>,
Matt Gray <matt at matthewgray.us>, Steve Fenberg <steve at stevefenberg.org>,
Chris Kennedy <Chris.Kennedy.House at gmail.com>, Kyra deGruy <
kedegruy at gmail.com>, <CityCouncilMembers at lakewood.org>, <
zackburley232 at gmail.com>, Sarah Parady <sarah at sarah4denver.com>, Melinda
Stevens <mstevens at drcog.org>, <kevin.flynn at denvergov.org>, Clark, Jolon M.
- CC XA1405 President Denver City Council <Jolon.Clark at denvergov.org>,
Rachel Hultin <rachel at bicyclecolorado.org>, Molly McKinley <
molly at denverstreetspartnership.org>, Bridget Walsh <denverbridget at gmail.com>,
NAACP Denver <SYoung at naacpdenver.org>, Sarah Griffin <
sjgriffin53 at comcast.net>, Floy Jeffares <floy at posteo.de>, Debbie Ortega <
debbie at debbieortega.com>, Stephanie Vigil <rep.steph.vigil at gmail.com>,
Xenophontos, Christos (DOT) <christos.xenophontos at dot.ri.gov>, Chris Hansen
<chris at hansenforcolorado.com>, Ean Tafoya <eanTafoya at greenlatinos.org>,
LBAT <lakewood-bicycle-advisory-group at googlegroups.com>, Matt Frommer <
mfrommer at swenergy.org>


Check out a new state law upgrading the standards that the Washington State
Department of Transportation (WSDOT) will use to* coordinate adding bike
and pedestrian facilities when basic maintenance is planned.* The new
Complete Streets mandate, signed into law with 2022’s Move Ahead Washington
transportation package
<https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/03/13/welcome-to-the-move-ahead-washington-era/>,
could prove more impactful than many of the individual projects included in
that multi-billion dollar transportation package.

*Any state highway projects over $500,000 in cost now require the state to
evaluate whether gaps in both existing bicycle and pedestrian networks can
be filled, and standards are required to be adhered to when it comes to
separation between those facilities and automobile travel lanes. *

*An example illustrates how many missed opportunities were left on the
table prior to the legislature’s actions. *It has taken a bit of time to
start to see what those results may be, but soon, a high profile project
along one of the state’s busiest highways is set to become a clear
illustration the mandate’s impacts. Since 2017, the City of Edmonds has
been working toward a full overhaul of State Route 99
<https://www.edmondscorridor99.org/> within its borders, from 244th Street
SW to 210th Street SW. Because the corridor revamp is being tackled in
seven segments, different parts of the corridor are starting design at
different times. Stages 1 and 2 have already started construction on raised
medians, gateway signs, and other improvements. Stage 3
<https://www.edmondscorridor99.org/3overview> (244th to 238th Streets)
and Stage
4 <https://www.edmondscorridor99.org/4overview> (224th to 220th Streets)
were advanced into the design phase last year. The new segments, which
amount to around twelve blocks in total, were prioritized over other parts
of the corridor to improve traffic operations at major intersections.
Since the city’s design team had already developed concepts for segments 3
and 4 before their counterparts at WSDOT filled them in on what the new
Complete Streets requirements entail, we can see the project change in
real-time.

*Fulfilling the bike network on SR 99 in Edmonds requires a
four-and-a-half-foot bike lane in each direction that does not appear in
the original plans. The new proposed design adds the raised bike lane,
protected by a planting strip, alongside the seven foot sidewalk along the
highway. The real time changes we see to accommodate the extra nine feet of
space required are planned buffers and planting strips narrowing and the
12-foot business access-and-transit (BAT) lanes shrinking by one foot each.
*Otherwise the six travel lanes along the highway are unaffected. Small
changes that would have been left on the table.

**

During an Edmonds City Council meeting last week when an update on the
design was provided, *there was broad support for the change, which clearly
doesn’t require a lot of sacrifices from other elements of the project. But
there was also curiosity among some of the councilmembers present about the
new requirement.*

*“WSDOT’s complete streets…this isn’t optional for us, is it?* Does WSDOT
require us to do complete streets?,” Councilmember Susan Paine asked
following a presentation. Lisa Reed, the project manager with the City of
Edmonds’ consultant on the project, confirmed that the city did had not
opted into the brand new standard. “To not incorporate it, you have to get
what’s called a design deviation…which would probably be difficult to get
for a project like this,” she said.

In this case, *the design changes are fairly small, even as the benefits
will be large.* What remains to be seen is what happens when there are more
direct trade-offs to adding Complete Streets elements, with a local plan
calling for protected bike lanes but where there’s current local opposition
to doing so — a state highway version of protected bike lanes on 35th
Avenue NE
<https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/03/26/mayor-durkan-cancels-35th-ave-ne-bike-lanes-caves-to-anti-safe-streets-advocates/>
.
A Significant Investment in Complete Streets

When lawmakers signed onto the Complete Streets mandate in the Move Ahead
Washington package, one of the biggest questions was how much the
requirement would impact the state transportation budget. Even as lawmakers
plan to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years
toward expanding the state highway system, the state’s maintenance backlog
on existing facilities continues to grow. While projects like the SR 99
revamp in Edmonds are funded by direct allocations from the legislature,
most new bike or pedestrian facilities added by the Complete Streets
mandate will need to come from the maintenance and preservation budget.

The 2022 update to WSDOT’s project delivery plan came up with a starting
point for that estimate, stating that $750 million out of the $1.5 billion
allocated in Move Ahead Washington would be anticipated to go to Complete
Streets updates, a full half of the maintenance and preservation budget.
That investment is likely the *largest statewide expenditure on bicycle,
pedestrian, and overall safe streets infrastructure in Washington history.
Even that is not going to be enough to fill the estimated network gaps on
state highways, around $5.3 billion dollars.*

“I don’t like to view it as ‘what is the additional cost?’ because we know
that *building streets that aren’t complete is only leading to more
fatalities, worse mobility. So I think it’s about ‘what do we need to do to
build it right,”* Senator Marko Liias, chair of the state senate’s
transportation committee, said during a press conference on the proposed
biennial state transportation budget last week — that budget starts to
allocate funding for these projects, even though full costs are not yet
known. “We need stormwater infrastructure, we need concrete that will last.
We also need facilities for bicycles and pedestrians and these things
aren’t additional cost as much as they are building it right.”  According
to WSDOT Communications Manager Stefanie Randolph, the department has
identified 44 individual projects in both fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year
2024 requiring Complete Streets review in either King or Snohomish County.
With the 2023 projects, 24 were found to meet the requirements for
potential upgrades, and 17 did not, with 3 projects still in review. For
2024, where reviews are in earlier stages, 17 projects were found to meet
the requirements. Overall, approximately 2 out of every 3 projects were
found to need upgrades.

In addition to SR 99 in Edmonds, Randolph noted that a repaving project
impacting parts of State Route 527, through unincorporated Snohomish County
and the city of Mill Creek, is just getting started and will be receiving a
Complete Streets review. A repaving project impacting a portion of SR 203
in Monroe will be similarly assessed. There could be some big opportunities
to connect population centers in Snohomish County in the coming years. *The
new requirement has the potential to correct decades of oversights from
local leaders and transportation officials when it comes to the bike and
pedestrian networks on and in between the state's highways.*

*“When we build a state highway, it lasts for generations in that
community. I can take you to a few places in my district where I wish
they’d had complete streets 20 or 30 years ago, and we’d have better
outcomes today,” Liias said. “When we talk about the next [statewide]
transportation package, we’re going to need to make sure that our
maintenance and preservation line items have additional funding to do these
projects right.”*


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