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The city of Liberty Lake is hitting the pavement to raise awareness about street funding.
At its June 16 City Council meeting, municipal leaders mulled over close to 20 projects that comprise Liberty Lake’s Comprehensive Transportation Program, a document outlining road improvements over a six-year period from 2010 to 2016. The goal of the plan, according to City Engineer Andrew Staples, is to put Liberty Lake in a position “to be eligible for grant programs and low-interest loans.”
“We want to have the opportunity to leverage city dollars with state and federal dollars,” Staple said
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This intersection at Harvard Road and Mission Avenue in Liberty Lake is one of several areas slated for improvements as part of the city’s Comprehensive Transportation Program. The Liberty Lake City Council approved the CTP to be passed on to the Spokane Regional Transportation Commission at its June 16 meeting.
Photo by: Craig Howard |
The Liberty Lake CTP was submitted to the Spokane Regional Transportation Commission last week. The agency serves as the clearing house for grants that support infrastructure upgrades throughout the greater Spokane area.
It marks the first time in four years that the city has compiled a list for the SRTC. Doug Smith, Liberty Lake’s community development director, said the time has arrived for the city to get in line for grant support.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to accomplish our transportation improvement objectives in recent years without these funds,” said Smith. “Now we have an opportunity to champion some of these priority projects.”
Mayor Wendy Van Orman said the city hopes to maintain its streets on a regular basis, avoiding the type of scenario experienced by the city of Spokane. After falling years behind in the preservation of roads, Spokane passed a $100 million capital improvement bond in 2004. Unfortunately, the funds were only expected to address about one-third of the problem.
“When you look at roads, it costs eight times more to completely reconstruct them than to keep them maintained,” Van Orman said.
Like the city of Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake has taken an inventory of city streets, evaluating potential renovations and rates of deterioration. While Van Orman said that “streets are in pretty good shape in most parts of the city,” certain areas, such as the junction of Harvard Road and Mission Avenue continue to generate concerns over safety.
The merging of cars off Interstate 90 at the intersection has caused a number of accidents, raising proposals to install a traffic light or a round-a-bout.
“Cars going down Harvard collide with cars off the freeway that are trying to get into traffic as quickly as possible,” Van Orman said.
The CTP includes plans for traffic signalization at Harvard and Mission as well as Harvard and Indiana Avenue.
Staples said the construction of medians along Appleway Road to the eastern limits of the city would help reduce the amount of maintenance required to street surface that the city engineer described as “a large expanse of asphalt.” Having a barrier between east/west traffic “would increase the safety of the corridor,” Staples said.
Staples emphasized that any project listed on the CTP would need be brought before the City Council for approval. One idea that showed up on the preliminary list dealt with the extension of Boone Avenue in Liberty Lake’s western boundary to Mission. Currently, residents of Liberty Lake need to take a circuitous route down Interstate 90 to Barker Road in order to reach destinations like the Valley HUB.
Smith said the project, estimated at a cost of $1.5 million, would need to be discussed with local developers before dirt could be moved, resulting in at least temporary removal from the current CTP list.
A technical committee with SRTC evaluates the merit of each project before the agency parcels out funds according to different categories such as safety and pavement preservation.
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By
Craig Howard
