By Dennis Box
The Courier-Herald
As traffic congestion mounts in Bonney Lake, the answer to the corridor problems gets trickier.
The City Council listened to an extensive presentation Feb. 21 from the Kirkland-based Transpo Group on the city's 20-year transportation plan and Parametrix, a Sumner engineering firm, on the 192nd Avenue East corridor study.
Some of the solutions to the growing traffic problems in the area were less than favorable to the members, particularly the 192nd Avenue corridor.
The plan is to connect the four sections of 192nd/190th, making a north-south corridor that would run from Rhodes Lake Road to state Route 410 East, finally ending at Sumner-Buckley Highway at the Target site.
Phase one would connect 192nd from SR 410 East to 104the Street East and would include curbs and gutters, sidewalks, bicycle lanes and landscaping.
Phase two would finish the job from 104th to Rhodes Lake Road.
The advantage of the connected corridor is better movement of traffic coming from the southern region of the Plateau.
But this is where the pragmatics and politics of the region part ways.
According to Deputy Mayor Dan Swatman, the completed corridor provides more assistance to county residents and developers in the south Plateau area, in particular Cascadia, Falling Water and White River Estates.
Also, Pierce County continues to consider a new Rhodes Lake Road providing an east-west connection off the Plateau to state Route 162, but the project is years in the future.
“If the Rhodes Lake Road does not get built we are in trouble,” City Councilman Jim Rackley said.
Cascadia is working on a 6,500 home development south of the city, Falling Water will have 1,100 homes and White River Estates has plans for about 2,000 homes. Ground has been broken at the Cascadia sight and homes are going up in the Falling Water development.
“It is unfair that the 192nd corridor provides huge benefits for the county, but the county will not provide impact fees (to the city),” Swatman said. “We will design the entire corridor, but it is a question what we will build.”
The list price for the project is about $14 million, but Public Works Director Dan Grigsby said once the 30 percent design phase is reached and the city knows the actual alignments and which properties must be purchased for right of way the price could drop significantly.
Grigsby said city staff will present a resolution to the council Tuesday to take the project to the 30 percent design phase.
“At that point we will stop until the City Council wants to move forward,” Grigsby said.
The director said the city has received a $1 million, low-interest loan from the state's Public Works Trust Fund for design of the highway and property acquisition.
Another contentious issue concerning the corridor was the 189th Avenue East cul-de-sac connection in the Fennel Ridge development to 192nd Avenue. Swatman said he plans to amend the resolution to remove the connection from the plan.
“I just think it is going to cost a lot of money and benefit very few,” Swatman said. “I would rather use the money to put sidewalks in at Bonney Lake Manor.”
The city hopes in the near future to raise the stakes with Cascadia over road improvements on both 192nd Avenue East and 198th/199th Avenue that runs between Bonney Lake High School and Mountain View Middle School.
Mayor Neil Johnson said the city's legal department is reviewing agreements between the city and Cascadia.
“A lot has changed since this started,” Johnson said. “The county is allowing growth in an area where there aren't roads. Our job is to try and get Cascadia to do their job.”
Cascadia paid mitigation fees for its phase one construction, but the council and mayor feel the funds are not adequate to meet the traffic demand.
“We want to find an opening in the agreement,” Swatman said. “They gave us some $350,000 for phase one mitigation and that's not going to work. We'll know something in a couple of weeks.”
Dennis Box can be reached at dbox@courierherald.com.
