Statement in Support of Street Reconstruction Resolution

With the adoption of the City’s Comprehensive Plan in 2001, many of our neighborhoods held much hope that when reconstructed, the arterials that run through our neighborhoods would be more pedestrian friendly, would have traffic calming features and would address the myriad of transportation concerns that parents of school children bring to our attention. After all, the Comp Plan has abundant references to these features. With the adoption of the Comprehensive Plan, we felt the City has heard residents’ concerns and that the groundwork had been put in place to provide us and our neighbors with meaningful transportation options. The Comprehensive Plan states in Section 18.2:

“…it is partly because of the existing nature of Spokane’s built environment that Spokane is auto dependent and lacking viable transportation options and, as a consequence, that citizens established this new direction. Following this new direction with its clear transportation priorities, however, will lead to new transportation systems that reflect the city’s new transportation goals. Establishing these new transportation systems for Spokane will take time. It will take careful and steady implementation of the plan, as expressed in its goals, policies, and implementation methods (such as the new street standards). But with consistent implementation of the plan on a case by case basis, the community’s built environment will change and with it, the opportunity for Spokane to achieve its desired future.”

In fact, the framers of the Comp Plan felt so strongly about these new transportation goals that they included a provision to provide for their funding. Section TR 9.3,  Dedicated Funds for Retrofitting, says: ”The City of Spokane shall dedicate some amount of its annual transportation capital budget to retrofitting the street system to meet the city’s pedestrian design standards.”

Our immediate concern is that the draft plan for the reconstruction of Bernard and other arterial streets this year includes none of the features mandated in the Comp Plan. In fact, it does the opposite in some cases by removing the existing street trees and planting replacement trees elsewhere in the neighborhood, along side streets and on private property. As regards the Bernard Street reconstruction, as presently designed, many school children attending Roosevelt, Cataldo, Hutton and Wilson schools will still have to cross an arterial with no traffic mitigation features. Other parents will drive their children to these neighborhood schools, simply because they feel it is not safe to walk, further aggravating neighborhood and school traffic congestion.

Additionally, walking options to downtown are extremely limited and almost always involve an arterial. Policy TR 2.7, “Safe Sidewalks,” states that “the city should provide for safe pedestrian circulation within the city; in most cases, this should be in the form of sidewalks with a separated curb and sidewalk. ….this plan focuses on sidewalks along arterials….“ Perhaps it should be noted here that there are those who believe, in spite of the Comprehensive Plan, that we should leave the choice of our transportation options in the hands of the Engineering Department. We believe that the design of our transportation choices should indeed be left to the Engineering Department. But what transportation choices are selected should be a civic discussion among residents. The Comprehensive Plan is the product of that civic discussion and our task now is to see that Engineering designs the transportation choices that the citizens have made.

We have before us an opportunity to improve and enhance the quality of our neighborhoods. What we build now will be the legacy that is left for generations to come. We want to continue and expand the tradition left to us by the Olmstead Brothers at the turn of the last century, when streets were designed with generous pedestrian buffer strips and street trees that grew to become majestic. That is the built environment we enjoy today and we feel it our responsibility to leave the same for those who follow.

Street designs that includes features identified by citizens in the Comp Plan not only provide for a great quality of life in our neighborhoods, they serve as an economic engine. Spokane’s economic development motto is, “Near nature, near perfect.” If we design and build streets that have no street trees and do not provide viable pedestrian options, then we are designing a critical  economic development component out of our city’s neighborhoods. As a City we spent seven years and eight million dollars developing our Comprehensive Plan. It seems foolish to disregard it as we rebuild our City streets.

What we ask today is that you take to this information back to your Neighborhood Councils as all neighborhoods will be effected by the precedent that is set on Bernard this Spring. We have included a resolution asking the City Council and the Mayor to see that alternative designs that include the features called for in the Comprehensive Plan are produced for Bernard and all other streets scheduled for reconstruction. To do less will weaken our neighborhoods, diminish our quality of life and weaken our economic development potential.

Resolution is here.
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