Log Cabin Road Extension Briefing to Olympia City Council on November 2, 2020
(Note: Transcript created through Microsoft 365 "Voice to Text" feature)

Mayor Selby

Briefing on a transportation plan, a 20 year transportation plan, including a potential extension through the Log cabin. The Log cabin extension, so we've got our Deputy Director of Public Works, Mark Russell here with backup from Jonathan Turlove who's our Director of Parks planning and maintenance.

Mark Russell

Thank you Mayor Selby. Good evening Council members as well. I'm gonna share my screen if that's alright.

Alright, can you see that OK? Again alright super.

Again, I'm Mark Russell, deputy director of Public Works, and with me tonight is Jonathan Turley, of our Director of Parks, planning and Maintenance, and tonight will be talking about transportation planning and Southeast Olympia, and in particular, the Log cabin road ext. Proposed project in the future.

I just want to start out by saying this the slide you'll see tonight, or largely from a 2016 briefing that we gave the Council at the time when LBA Woods was considered being purchased for park property, as well as the right of way for future transportation corridor so staff have not worked on this project since 2016, so there is not recent analysis and that type of thing. So I just wanted to caveat that this is largely from 2016. What you'll see tonight and what the Council at that time considered.

So let me start with a little bit of history.

Log Cabin Road has been a strategy for movement of East West traffic so that Yelm highway and other roads in the southeast area do not fail.

It's been part of the regional transportation plan since the early 1990s.

It's one of the key transportation needs in Southeast Olympia to help reduce vehicle miles traveled and give route options in a part of the city that you've heard me talk about before, where there are very few route options.

And finally, it's linked to past decisions regarding our other regional partners. For example, Lacy completed its Mullen Road Ext project between College Street and Ruddell Road, and this road will connect up to that and Thurston County will help with Yelm Highway with the understanding that Log happened would be built in the future when they did their planning and constructed their roadway as well.

However, we need to acknowledge that there has been a change in the landscape regarding this area. As you know, the city purchased the LBA Woods parcel and there were no longer large developments planned on these parcels.

There was also a new regional traffic model to have new volumes forecasted and that was back in 2016 as well. That took traffic modelling out to 2040.

These were all questions the Council considered when we were making the decision to purchase the LBA Woods parcel and purchasing the right of way for a future Road.

There are still important questions that you've heard tonight being raised by the public.

And there is two basic questions. Is the extension of Log Cabin Road still needed, and if yes, are there alternatives to doing that?

And so I'll kind of take you through the decision-making that was made at that time.

This is a map of the area and I'll point to a few things you can see Lacey's Mullen Road coming in from College Street and then 37th and Herman Road linking up with Wiggins Road here in the middle.

These are the parcels that were contemplated at the time they used to be known as Brentridge and Ashton Woods. Those were the two large master planned developments that were proposed at the time.

The Green Line is the proposed alignment of the Log cabin extension, and then that feeds into Log Cabin Road and ultimately North Street and then the rest in Boulevard Road and the rest of the roads moving West. You'll see Yelm highway down here to the bottom and 18th Ave to the North.

And. Um again, Lacey is kind of grayed out here, so this is a connection between Lacey and Olympia as well as Thurston County.

So the question we evaluated at the time was if there were no developments in this area, would we still need the road?

Um and the traffic numbers. I'll be showing you are without those developments, so those those vehicle trips were taken out of the analysis back in 2016 when we were contemplating this decision and I just want to note that if those developments were to occur, these traffic volumes would be even higher.

So let's see what would happen as we move East West traffic. So we would see roughly another 50 vehicles during the peak hour on 18th Ave.

And this is without Log Cabin Road being extended we would see an additional 255 vehicles in that peak hour on Morse Merriman and just to note, that's a 40% increase over existing traffic volumes.

And that would cause a need for a third Lane. A mainly turn Lane on Morse Merriman Road You've already heard tonight from the public that it does need bicycle lanes and sidewalks. And all those types of things with this would require another lane on Morse Merriman Road

Um, the other things we considered, which you'll see when I get into some of the cost estimates is and I'll just point here because it's it's easy to show it is.

Regardless of whether the road goes through, we need to do some sort of improvement here. At 37th Herman and Wiggins.

Um, if we were to take traffic around this way, we would likely need a roundabout at this intersection around about at Hoffman Road, and then ultimately the new roundabout at Boulevard and Morse Merriman would need to be enlarged when we this decision was made at the same time we were getting ready to finalize the design and go out to bid on the Boulevard and more smooth I mean Road, roundabout, and the reason that decision was timely is we made the decision at that time because of the topography. You know, there's a hill there and houses above it, and there's a big retaining wall. We made the decision not to have to a two Lane roundabout because we assumed.

That Log Cabin Road would be extended, so if we were to go on Morse Merriman Road, there would need to be substantial improvements and I'll talk a little bit more about that later.

And then a wilderness subdivision would see another 50 vehicles for peak hour.

Um and then Yelm Highway would see another 155 vehicles during that peak hour. So overall, we're talking roughly.

The modelling shows in the future another 500 vehicles moving East West over the next 20 years in the 2040 timeframe.

So obviously, based on those results and again we did this analysis in 2016. We feel that the extension of Log Cabin Road from Boulevard to 37th is needed, but we do acknowledge that it's not needed right away. We think this road need is at least 15 to 20 years from now.

And um, and who knows? If we continue to meet our goals for people riding, transit, walking, biking, getting out of their single occupancy vehicles, this road may not be needed for longer than that, if at all. So we do acknowledge that.

But it was prudent for us to plan for it when the decision was made to purchase the LBA Woods property.

So in order to do that, we took the Council through some visualizations let me just walk you through that.

This is an aerial view of the park. Here's again I rough alignment of the road. It's not exact where we think it might be, and you'll see the visualizations, or from this point right here in the middle of the park and then the visualizations on Morse Merriman on or from roughly best point near McKinney Elementary School.

And Washington State Department of Transportation helped us with his visualizations. They had the technology to do that, so even four years later, I'd like to give them credit for the help 'cause it really helped us see what was going to happen.

So this is the original design with a median. Our typical standard for a collector road of this nature.

Where you'll see that the right of way is roughly 84 feet. It has a sidewalk planter strip by bike lane travel lane median and then the same on the other side.

It looks much like what Lacey constructed on their Mullan road ext. As you proceed from Ruddell and East.

Again, this was 84 feet of right away.

And you can kind of see it from the Street View. What that might look like.

At the time we went through several other options with the Council, but ultimately the preferred scope and the right of way that we purchased.

Um ended up being this cross section right here.

It's a two-Lane cross section with just a minimal shoulder and then over on one side of the road. There would be a mixed use bicycle and pedestrian path separated from the roadway and the reason we separated that was to be able to meander it and work through some of the more mature trees as we need to with that um, the right-of-way is 60 feet instead of 84, but the actual road and path improvements are only 38 feet.

So again, our goal would be in building this cross section is to leave as many of the trees next to the roadway as possible and then fit this path in potentially meandering in order to save as many trees as possible.

This lesser alternative addresses our transportation needs, especially without the developments. There won't be the need to have turnout pockets and all those types of things for people to access developments. It's less impactful to the surrounding park and open space.

And you'll see in a few minutes that it's the most cost effective as well.

And Council in 2016 chose this option based on the feedback from the public at the time and being least impactful to the Woods.

So based on Community requests at that time as well, we also looked into making improvements on Morse Merriman Road as an alternative to Log cabin extending Log cabin.

Um again Morse Merriman would need to be widened to three to four lanes in different places, depending on how that would work.

There would be more needed stormwater improvements. It would be constructed under traffic and really what starts to drive the cost up or the intersection improvements that would need to be made instead of just an intersection improvement. At this end, Wiggins and Herman. We would also have to do significant intersection improvements at Wiggins and more on Hoffman and Morse Merriman and reduce some of the work on Boulevard and Morse Merriman to allow the left terms to be there.

This is a longer route and the reason I'm going into some of this details that kind of explains why the constants came in the way they were. It's a longer route, it's about 1 1/2 miles as opposed to a mile.

Let's see, here's the aerial of that, the existing Morse Merriman Road

And you can see the houses and the adjacent subdivisions. Here's the McKinney Elementary School are relatively close to the road. So what you're seeing down below is just one certain area of parcels that we think would be significantly impacted by the widening.

You can see here. We have left turn Lane added our typical standard with sidewalk planner, strip bike lanes bringing it up to our current standard. Basically and again we did a very high level look. This is not a detailed design. But you can see that there are several homes along more smoothing than with any widening that would be significantly impacted if we didn't have to take the whole parcel completely, we would likely have a sidewalk really close to their homes, and so that weighed into the decision as well.

And again, this is just one part of the corridor. It's similar in other parts.

So looking at the cost summary from 2016, the original design. With the city standard, with the median and everything was just under 10,000,000. Now again, these costs would go up because they're already four years old. At the time, the minimal cross section with the 1-sided path was around $7 million. And the alternative route to Morris Merriman was $47 million.

And again, that probably gives you some sticker shock.

But um, what we need to remember, and that's why I kind of went through some of the details. It's a much more complicated road project.

With it being constructed under traffic just the right of away, alone at a high level is about $10,000,000. You throw in a couple roundabouts at $5,000,000 each, and it's really easy to get to multiple millions of dollars compared to the other projects.

Now again, I do want to acknowledge we did not do a detailed design and a detailed cost estimate. This is a very high-level planning level estimate as we were to move into design these things would get tightened up, but the scale I think is what's important here. Even if we overestimated this project by twice it's still a $20,000,000 project as opposed to a $10,000,000 project, just in round numbers. Even if we've overestimated you know work to reduce right away work to reduce the cross section in places where it might be impactful. It's still a much more expensive project and more impactful to go down Morse Merriman. And so that's why the Council decided at the time to move forward with the current project scope of just a two Lane Road with a 1 sided path.

Let's see here.

So in a quick summary, before Jonathan talks a little bit about the park.

We do feel that East West connection is still needed, although it be 15 to 20 years from now.

In staff's opinion, now is not the time to analyze this project in more detail.

As good as modeling, maybe things are going to be very different, likely in 15 to 20 years from now, so our intent would be to do public outreach. We'll start looking into the details when we start that future design in that 15 to 20 year timeframe.

We feel Log Cabin Road is the most cost effective, especially with the neutral project scope.

It fits well within the park similar to other parks around town.

And then this is what's new, which we were trying to make the decision at the time the Council did purchase the right-of-way with at the same time as the park property. Transportation impact fees were used to purchase that of nearly $400,000. So Park money was not used to purchase the right-of-way, it was transportation. Impact fees were used to purchase that.

That's a little bit of history, and some of the alternatives that were looked at in order to get to where we are today. I'll turn it over quickly now to Jonathan to talk a little bit about the park specifically.

Jonathan Turlove

Oh, good evening, Madam, Mayor members of the Council. For the record, Jonathan Turlove, parks planning and maintenance director hold on. I just. There we go. I was too still in the lights in the room, just turned off that wasn't good.

Just to start with I wanted to talk about the relationship with the road to the park and to start with. I just wanted to kind of reiterate what Mark said.

And that you know this, this planned Road doesn't come as a surprise at all. To us. This was part of the plan of the property purchase from the getgo when council directed us to make this property purchase, that was always in the works. To do this transportation corridor. Through it, so yeah, this isn't a late hit or anything like that. We always knew this was in the in the distant future at some point.

But this slide shows it's just a very conceptual alignment of the road and and sort of how it would layout with the existing trails in the park. You can see most of the trails are on the South side of excuse me of where the planned Road would be. Now on the East side of the park, the Ashton Woods sort of portion of LBA Woods. There you can see that you know there would. There would likely be need to be some of the trails would need to be realigned to reduce the number of crossings for the road so you know it's not to say that that a road through here would have no impact because it would have an impact on on those trails on that side of the park, particularly now.

That being said, you're going to advance the slide mark to the next one.

You know I I think. The the minimal cross section that's being proposed with a 1 sided path is compatible with the park. You know, I think a good example that we have locally of a similar type situation is Priest Point Park. This is a photo I took of East Bay drive through Priest Point Park just last week. And you know it's it's analogous in that Priest Point Park has a trail network on both sides of the of East Bay Drive and in all the years I've worked for the Parks Department, I've never heard anybody say, you know, yeah, Priest Point Park, it would be OK if it didn't have that Road through the middle of it. You know? Again, it it does seem to function fine with that with that Road. A couple opportunities that this would provide too would be it would provide an ADA accessible route to the park from the adjacent neighborhoods as well as a bicycle and pedestrian connection to the Chehalis Western Trail.

Which I think would be a really good opportunity to be able to have better access to the park from that trail. It could provide some more safety with just some more eyes on the park, as well as being a scenic drive. You know. Obviously several hundred people a day would be experiencing it as they drive through it now again. That's not to say that's anything like taking a hike in the park and or anything like that, but I think it does. There is some benefit for a scenic drive, just like when one drives through Priest Point Park on East Bay Drive there is there is some value there so I guess I would just say. In summary, you know, while it's not without it's challenge is, I think you know, overall this would be compatible with the park and provide some valuable opportunities for the park.

Mark Russell

I mean, I think before we take questions I believe Jay had a couple comments he wanted to make.

Jay Burney

Yeah, I just want to close here by emphasizing that that this is not a decision that needs to be made now, as a staff is to talk a little bit about the need for this roadway as as part of a regional connection is not needed for at least 15 years in the future. I want to emphasize that as we get closer and as Mark alluded to this, we will reevaluate the need for this connection and we will engage the community in that decision making process like we do with all of our major roadway projects and to get feedback and look at design options to see if they need to change 15 years from now, from what we presented tonight, because a lot can change between now and then. As Mark alluded to, I also want to point out that our next comprehensive plan update is scheduled in the 2023-2024 time frame and that is another opportunity to have this conversation, and I think you know, with that Staff is open any questions Council might have.

Mayor Selby

Alright, let me get my screen back up alright.

I know several of the newer council members had requested this briefing and hopefully that you found it valuable. You need to get some of the background.

Uh, does anybody have more questions at this point, or alright, so I'll start with I saw Councilmember Rollins, followed by Councilmember Parshley.

Um? Thank you, yeah, and thank you for the presentation. Let's see I guess.

Councilmember Rollins

I guess my question is like we we keep hearing and I know this isn't scheduled to be built for 15 or so years.

And and we're all acknowledging that.

That you know, maybe if if the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan is successful, that maybe you know that it would not. It may not be necessary.

But as as was acknowledged in the presentation, decisions about current projects or are being made based on the assumption that this road is is going to happen. For example, the roundabout at Morse Merriman Boulevard. And I'm just. It I don't know if it's so much a question as a comment that that even that just having that the the idea of a Road being there is impacting projects that are happening and I'm just hoping that we, yeah, you know, there's no action scheduled on this tonight, and I think this is really more of are we just a renewing of the conversation which is going to be ongoing, but but it just seems to make sense. You know, we're in this time of uncertainty and flux in in in what are what our community is going to look like, what growth is going to look like, what the future of this country you go really big picture and the future of this country.

Um and I think in all that uncertainty there's also an opportunity there to really act on what our values are and really think about the way that roads you know in induced demand and allow for more development of the type of housing that we say we want to have, like transit oriented development and that and a lot of times we lament when I development goes in that's not along transit lines and we say like, well, at this point we don't have the ability to to nix a project because that you know, it's in the realm of the hearings examiner. But this is the kind of exactly the kind of intervention points where elected officials do actually have influence over the patterns of development, and whether they are in line with our community values or not. And I just the Woods really special place. I don't think anyone just agrees with that on the in the city, but it's just it's I don't know. I just can't picture the road going through and I think a lot is going to change in 15 years and we just have we have to.

There's no easy way to undergo a shift. I guess if there's one question if if there's a question behind it all, it's just at you know, in in a field like like traffic engineering and planning, how do you account for how did how do you account for major shifts in In priorities, in a community, like when it like, given that this is 15 years off, but it is impacting development today.

I don't know. Maybe that's more philosophical than really, really a technical question, mark, but I can try to answer that a little bit.

Mark Russell

As you know, we we are always trying to.

Um, do more with less. We have very limited transportation dollars and our goals in the Comprehensive Plan and of this community are to have less vehicles, especially single occupancy vehicles, and get people biking, walking, riding, transit, and so we're going to continue to do that in our Projects as you'll see with the master plan that's that's coming out shortly, really, starting to emphasize those projects, as I said earlier, staff has not worked on this project since 2016 because we've been focused on trying to make our transportation system or multimodal, and so if we're successful in that, believe me on the last one that wants to build a multi-million dollar road if we don't need it.

Um, we have other more pressing projects that we need to do. Certainly ahead of this one, and if in the future that this road isn't needed, then you know I'm going to be the last one advocating to build it, but with what we know now and with what the model is showing us now with today's information.

It's prudent to plan for it, and all we've really done is set aside the right of way to make that possible in the future. There is, say, this is not on my radar as far as mark myself and my staff for quite some time, so I hope that helps a little bit and I hope our master plan will lead the community in a direction that.

That you know this road won't be needed for even much longer than 20 years or may not even be needed at all.

Councilmember Rollins

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you and you know as we move forward, especially with the present climate mitigation plan maybe. Maybe it will become more of a practice that we are able to just go all in for the kind of future that we that we need to have in order to survive. And rather than kind of hedging like well, if it were, hope it's successful. But here's what we do if it's not really just going all in for a sustainable future. But thank you again for updating and I'm sure we'll talk again.

Mayor Selby

Oh, I saw a counselor Parshley.

Her hand was up.

Councilmember Parshley

Yeah, I agree with the Council member. Well and thank you for the update. It is really useful I I had a couple questions than just a comment. I was looking at the numbers you're putting together. My first question is when was the traffic study done that generated this these numbers, or was it done in early 2000s, late 1990s? Where was it and what is the assumption that Log cabin is gonna have for a number of vehicles across it in the future? If you had to build it so? In other words, how much is it really going to reduce car load through Morse Merriman, Yelm Highway? And Wilderness? Is it you know? Is it gonna be substantial enough to warrant the loss of you know carbon sequestration, I guess, is where I'm going.

What are these numbers?

And then when were they done and will we be planning on doing another traffic study before we even begin the design plan?

Mark Russell

OK, let me answer those as best I can. The numbers were updated in 2016, so the numbers I showed you on that one graphic were looking at this traffic patterns. Without those two, I think they were 500 plus home developments, so it took those away and so those were updated in 2016 when we did the analysis and that was using a brand new model that Thurston Regional Planning Council had just put out at that time. Which projected traffic volumes to 2040.

So that's that's when we did it, so they're not 1990 numbers. There were 2016 numbers.

As far as the vehicles, we think about 500 vehicles will be moving back and forth from East to West, and if we don't have the road, you can see what happens to the adjacent roadways or the parallel roadways we feel a majority of those vehicles if we build the road, would use Log cabin because it is the most direct.

Some vehicles may, you know, split off and do other things depending on what they're doing, so there may be some increase on Morse, Merryman 18th and other roads like there normally would be, but for pure East West movement we figure a majority of those 500 vehicles would stay on Log cabin, 'cause it's the most direct rRoute and so that's roughly the volume and then.

Um, I think the third question you asked. If I'm keeping him straight, I apologize if I'm not, is when we do this again and and staff proposes that we analyze this closer again when the road might be need. So if we start to see traffic volumes increasing, say 15 years from now and we start to see more accidents happening and more congestion, more safety issue. Those are all the signs that something might need to be done, and so that's the time that we would start to put that project in the CFP and start to put do those additional analysis to make sure that.

The road is still needed and then start to look at what it might take to do it so.

Councilmember Parshley

If I could just end on a comment. I think Councilmember Rollins is right on in terms of developments in that area. If developers are counting on the Log cabin being a safety valve, we won't necessarily be planning our development based on transit.

An purposely building our developments based on transit, we would be basing it on the road that might have 500 vehicle travels per day, which does seem counter intuitive for park as opposed to the neighborhoods around it which are already built for that. And lastly, I will make one last comment about small changes now impacting big changes later. I'm gonna be a broken record on this because I think every city and every jurisdiction in our County has to be asking what small changes can we make in our sequestration abilities now that are going to have the big impacts in 2030 and 2050?

Because without this sequestration, we will not make our goals, period. There is no question about that, so losing a swath of land, even if it's 30 feet wide, with cars driving through it, might be antithetical to that potential sequestration, not to mention all the other things that we heard in public comment.

So I hope we're we're wise enough to understand that if we commit like Councilmember Rollin said now to a vision of the future of where we need to go and then commit to the fact that some of these changes are gonna cost us more money to actually have the Community we want to live in.

Mayor Selby

Thank you, I've got Councilmember Cooper.

Followed by councilmember Madrone.

Councilmember Cooper

Thank you Mayor Selby.

Oh man, this is a tough one, and as you're already seeing in the conversation, you know so.

You know the purpose of our long range planning for transportation is to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And so I think you know to getting to Councilmember Parshley’s point when it's time to do analysis again, you know, once the tradeoff in carbon emissions from miles reduced, miles traveled and the holding capacity of those trees.

Now, that said, I'm I'm sitting on the climate committee and and I feel like I'm paying pretty close attention to how the world is changing around around new kinds of technology. And, you know, I hope I'm wrong. But I'm gonna say what I'm feeling right now and that's that we will do so well with electric vehicle uptick that we will have more vehicle miles traveled. And unless there's a significant federal investment in transit and state investment in transit I worry that that's the world we're looking for. And it's in that vein transportation costs for maintaining asphalt is going to go up, and it's really unfortunate. But that is kind of I think I I worry that that's where we're headed. So so being smart about this.

And you know when, when we sat down to to figure out how to save the LBA Woods, I was tasked by the Council to to to negotiate with the coalitions of parks advocates an every single person at the coalition and every single person on the Council and the staff wanted to figure out if there was a way to not build this road through the heart of the LBA Woods.

And I you know, when we looked at the same information that that Mark showed us today, we landed in a unanimous position that that made the most sense given the knowledge that we had at that time. And I, I'd venture that the knowledge hasn't changed a lot since 2016. Though there is more emphasis on the planet I, I am grateful for that.

And so you know one of the things that is really clear to me too, though, is that there is huge restoration opportunities within the LBA Woods. Like it is not old growth, it has been logged and it could use some work. And so Mark my first question is, what's the restoration requirement of putting a Road through a forest?

Mark Russell

Um?

Well, certainly we haven't analyzed that level of detail yet, but certainly, you know, as we've been talking about this, you know the trees that might need to come down, and things that we might disturb. It does give us an opportunity to mitigate that in other places in the park so.

Um, that would be all things we would look at as we start some pre design work in the future. Look at the environmental impacts, but certainly it does give us some opportunities of what we do take out to mitigate something better with new plantings in other places or along the road to create some screening or whatever.

There's there's a lot of possibilities that we could work with the community and the Parks Coalition and our own Parks Department on to to partner with this and and really make it as best as it can be with the transportation needs. So, but I don't have a specific answer for you on exactly what we would have to do without.

Councilmember Cooper

That that's fine, I think, just to demonstrate that it's possible it could be better and the you know the you know the access is a is a big issue and so my next question is if we built the alternative that's in front of you know kind of was the 2016 decision, would we be able to abandon the northern part of the Water Tower Road?

So you would then access the water tower from Log Cabin Road and not from Morse Merryman.

Mark Russell

Um, I don't know if I can say for sure, but it's certainly something we could look at as long as there's access to the the water tower, we could work with our water resources and our staff to to see if that's an option that that would work for them, and certainly an idea that we could look at.

Councilmember Cooper

There's 30 feet of restoration for, you know, for quite some period now.

My next question is. But I was trying to think really hard and I. I don't think that this came up back in 2016. But we could change the alignment of that road so we could come off of Boulevard at Log Cabin South to the southern border and then the road would go along the northern edge of Wilderness and then when it hits the eastern edge it would hook back North to make the connection and not bisect the Woods versus move to the edge of the Woods. Is that theoretically possible or is that something that you've looked at in detail at all?

Mark Russell

Yes, it's theoretically possible. We did a high level look and tried to pick an alignment that had the most or the least impact to the nicer trees. So we did a little bit of sort of aim to do the right of way. We also thought that having it closer to the existing park might give some opportunities for access and and on that area, but the point was we we set aside 60 feet of right away through the park property and that could be with some administration moved around if we find better routes that would be less impacted the park or serve a different purpose. So yes, I think we can move it around. What was the reason it was so important to set the right way aside at the same time, not only for contributing money to help purchase the parcels in the 1st place, but yes to buy Park property once it's a park after the fact for right of way is much more difficult and complicated administratively. So was it was important that that decision was made, but I don't think it's as difficult to move it around. Examples. We're not taking more property than we already had acquired, that's my understanding and Jonathan can correct me if I'm wrong, but.

Councilmember Cooper

OK, so so it can the you know the right away is mobile right now and and so you know it might be slightly longer, but it wouldn't include taking homes or are building roundabouts. With the exception of one.

Now my last question it is to your comment about we probably don't need to and now is not the time to analyze this and and and I would say that maybe it is if we were going to move the alignment. And so if we were going to move the alignment we would need to interface with the new commercial and housing on Boulevard in the right way and make that right of way no [unintelligible] And so for that reason I could see doing a little bit more work right now to run the numbers on on an idea like that if you know if people wanted to check it out so that it would be predictable what that development going in on Boulevard Road would look like in the future. So that those were my thoughts, I you know I'm inclined to keep it on the shelf but I also think it's good for the community to keep having the healthy conversation because LBA Woods is absolutely the number one example of how public engagement works really well in Olympia. Aand you know it's it's my proudest of accomplishment of my life other than my little girl and it may very well be for the rest of my life. It's pretty significant. I'm really proud of it and I just want to keep keep having a conversation and and not just be inclined to push it away.

Mayor Selby

Thank you I've got Councilmember Madrone followed by Councilmember Gilman.

Councilmember Madrone

Well, Jim, thanks for asking that question about realignment further South. 'cause that was one of the the questions that I had and I acknowledge that just a few weeks ago on this virtual dais, as we were all having a conversation about when we were talking about I-5 around, you know, expanding roads and congestion and you know, and climate change. And this seems like very similar conversation that we're having right now.

And of course, we're required by the state to plan into the future around transportation needs and, and I hope I. I hope that it will never need this road. I am. I am pretty certain that I don't think it's fair to to switch the road to expanding Morse Merriman and just looking at the extra cost, knowing how much funding has already been invested in this area, and knowing that if we decide that we're just going to expand Morse Merriman and build those roundabouts, that that's gonna take money away from another part of the city. So I, I'm concerned about equity issues in that regard. I am wondering in terms of uh, level of service requirements is it, is it possible to say OK, you know reflecting back onto a councilmember Rollins, you know, thoughts on decisions we can make now that could just dramatically reshape how we how we do things in the future? Is it possible to say OK, we're just gonna accept that this is going, we're going to have a lot of congestion in this area, and hopefully that's going to influence people to make different decisions. And, you know we're not going to build this road, but we're also not going to do anything to address congestion. Can we just reduce the level of service?

Mark Russell

Yes, that's always an option is to have or to put up with more congestion, although that does have, as you know, some other ramifications like people idling and greenhouse gas emissions which go against our other goals. But yes, that's always an option.

And one thing that we're going to start shifting away from instead of a level of service on congestion is really a complete transportation system, so so that will be our measure is is how complete is our transportation system. So to answer your question, the short, yes, it's always an option to to do nothing here and and put up with with different levels of congestion and different routes and and potentially change people's habits. That's always an option, yes.

Councilmember Madrone

And well, since you brought it up, how does this the Log Cabin and Extension Road play into the complete systems you know, especially in terms of bike pedestrian path.

Mark Russell

Yeah, it was accounted for. It's not specifically listed in our master plan because it it's a street. It's a new street connection, and those are in the comprehensive plan, so we didn't want to double up on that. But when they ran the model to look at where were some points around the city that we were going to have to look at in the future, this was understood to be one of the places that that we would need to address. You know, there's a few points, but most of those other than these new street connections to disperse traffic, most of those are intersection improvements for safety and to keep traffic as opposed to widen enough.

We're we're trying to get away from widening roads and do more safety and flow related projects, as well as biking, Ped, and that's why it's so important. Jonathan, alluded to the Chehalis Western Trail, is just East of this location and um, you know this would be an important connection to that trail system with that path that goes through along with the road so it would accommodate all of that. Did I answer your question?

Councilmember Madrone

Yeah, yeah you did. You did, yeah. And you know I, I'm inclined to to say that, you know I'd rather than trying to figure out you know how to make other things work and plan and planning for that level of traffic and reducing congestion. You know, I'd rather we just invest, you know whatever energy that would go into alternatives. Be into figuring out how to implement our our climate mitigation plan and then we just never need that Road.

Mayor Selby

Alright councilmember Gilman

Councilmember Gilman

Thank you, I really appreciate that we stopped to take the time to to hear the briefing again, but I I also want to acknowledge that the the campaign to oppose the road ext is is not necessarily an either or Morse Merriman or Log cabin.

But I I, I think it's a broader call.

That people in the neighborhood and people who use that park are hoping that we might transform transportation, greenspace, recreation, and and steer our our redevelopment in ways that that makes sense with our our climate plan.

Um, so to that end, if if if we were taking up and I so I'm I'm, I'm thinking about the conversation that Dani and Mark just had about level of service and at the beginning the presentation you use the term fail. And I'm wondering so are there consequences about having something that's according to engineering standards failed in terms of accessing maintenance funds or other are what are the negative impacts of having a failed, a failed roadway by by engineering standards?

Mark Russell

Um, mostly it is at least with past. With a typical level of service standard, it's all about congestion and delay at intersections or along segments of Road. And so that's been the traditional failure you've heard. Our level of service A through F like a report card where A has minimal delay and F is is almost gridlocked. And so we're moving away from that with a master plan into a complete system and are wanting to accept more congestion.

That being said, you can still have failure occur which causes safety issues and so for example, if an intersection is too congested, we may be willing to spend the time in that intersection, even though it may be causing more idling and negative impacts of that, but let's just say, as a community, we're willing to accept that, then you start to have potentially safety issues that would cause us to need to act to do something to help that that intersection or that segment of road that that may be. And it's usually related to accidents or injuries or those types of things that would be occurring. So that would be our focus with the new master plan is to accept a little more congestion, but not so much that we compromise safety and the flow of traffic, which is what's important.

Councilmember Gilman

And would the I, I believe the next Comp Plan major revision begins in 2023.

Mark Russell

That, that's correct.

Councilmember Gilman

Yeah, and so is that the point if a large section of the community or a quadrant of the city wanted to have a conversation about rethinking their street network and their green spaces, would would that be the most likely document? Or would there be another place to have that conversation?

Mark Russell

I think the from my perspective the the Comp Plan I think is going to start a little earlier than 23, but the transportation component of it I think is starting in 23, three and going into 24. Is the schedule I saw last. That is one of the places to have that conversation because what's in that is the street connections, and this is one of the three connections that are in our comprehensive plan, one of many. So that is one place that we could have that conversation yes.

Councilmember Gilman

I mean, I was intrigued with a suggestion. There's been many very eloquent and poetic emails and calls, right in this across this campaign and somebody was asking this week about traffic calming being an option, and I was thinking, well, if a neighborhood said we just want to be local access, prioritized bike and PED, and have a 15 mile an hour speed limit, then that's a different sort of -- that's a transformational vision right of just, just accept that it's all like a giant inside of a subdivision. You're just going to putt along.

Well. So I I'm just I'm intrigued, I'm intrigued. I don't want us to be so narrow about it being the Log cabin road ext. when what I'm hearing is calls to transform and I and I push just like Jim called out that it's super frustrating to me that vehicle miles traveled per person and the size, and inefficiency of vehicles are both going up, the size of houses that are being built as new construction are going up. There's there's no signs at this moment about reducing those needs.

So I hear the pleas in the letters and I'm wondering. Maybe we have to transform our infrastructure to help nudge that along, so I'll I'll close with that, but I really appreciate everybody's comments this evening.

Mayor Selby

Alright, we are good.

Excellent Councilmember Parshley

Councilmember Parshley

I I just first I came off strong, but I think we're struggling with what sequestration means to our County. So I'm a firm believer in our climate mitigation, and hopefully we'll have more information and phase three for climate mitigation that might inform some of this and inform how we plan our parks and our green spaces.

But I I would love it if Mark had come out and just let everybody who's listening when are we gonna be hearing the final on the traffic master plan? Because some of this is going to be presented. You know where the where are we gonna be putting our paths? Our multi-modal efforts in our transportation master plan.

Mark Russell

We are, as we speak, we are literally putting the final touches on the draft plan. I would expect that I, I think I told you it would be the end of October and we haven't met that that timeframe.

Unfortunately, it's it's just a lot of work to get this document put together since it's the first one we've done, I really expect it to be out for public review by the middle of this month in the next couple of weeks.

So. Almost there.

Mayor Selby

Right, I think we're ready to move on.

So thank you, Mark, and thank you, Jonathan.

For that presentation and briefing.

More to come.