A plan for transportation along the 179th Street corridor received County Council majority approval, though concerns about the timing of projects and the overall effect of development have residents questioning what the once-rural area will become.
During the July 18 meeting, the Clark County Council voted 3-1 to approve the 179th Street Access Management and Circulation Plan. The plan details where improvements to the street and streets currently extending from it will be, and where roads to be built will be located.
Why the plan
After the area around 179th Street was added to Vancouver’s urban growth area in 2007, about 2,200 acres in the northernmost portion of the area were designated an “urban holding,” which prevents development. This was an acknowledgement of the need for infrastructure to support urban-level development at the time, Clark County Community Planning Director Oliver Orjiako said.
In 2019, the Clark County Council voted to lift that designation. Since then, development projects in the 179th Street corridor have begun, although major infrastructure improvements to the corridor haven’t.
The plan is intended to address road safety, traffic congestion and accommodating infrastructure and utility needs, as well as protecting wetlands, according to the county presentation. The plan, initially recommended for approval by the Clark County Planning Commission in February 2022, received greater public outreach following a decision by the County Council to pause adoption after residents complained they did not receive enough notice of the plan.
Although several of the some-20 public testifiers at the July 18 meeting thanked the county for the greater outreach, they said it was too little, too late. Concerns ranged from a lingering sense of a lack of transparency, to the overall effect development would have on the area.
Questions on concurrency
Councilor Glen Yung didn’t see so much concern from residents over the planned road infrastructure included in the plan, but more into whether or not the current infrastructure could support the development already happening, or if projects would be built in time to support new growth.
He asked at what point of failure of service would the county look at putting on a development moratorium.
“I hate to do that because this housing is so needed in our county. We have such a huge shortage of it. However, at some point of failure, we have to take a look at that,” Yung said.
A term brought up by residents was “concurrency,” defined by the Washington State Growth Management Act as development of an area with sufficient infrastructure support. The act requires that improvements or strategies are in place at the time of development, or that a financial commitment is in place to complete those improvements or strategies in six years, Clark County Public Works Director Ken Lader said.
“We’ve heard a lot of examples of where our constituents feel like that’s not happening in the corridor,” Lader said.
He said concurrency determination was a dynamic process, and based on traffic modeling the county has done, concurrency will continue to be met through what capital projects are planned in the area.
He said the first projects along the corridor are both intersections — at Northeast 50th Avenue and Northeast 29th Avenue — because those are a greater factor in traffic congestion than the roads between.
Gary Albrecht, long-range transportation planner with Clark County Public Works, said 179th Street was not failing based on current traffic congestion levels. He said each development site will have to address the county’s congestion level requirements.
“If at the time when a specific development indicates that that section of roadway is going to move into failure, then they’ll have to figure out a way to mitigate the impacts from their development,” Albrecht said.
Lader said some of the testimony regarding congestion is based on observation during peak times, though, on average, the road meets the standard above failure. He said the county would be performing traffic counts in the highest-traffic areas to see what changes to traffic signals or adding a turn lane could help.
“I understand there is a lot of charged feeling and anecdotal evidence of failure, and the road is not in the best shape and there’s a lot of activity, but based on our calculations, we don’t have a reason to impose a moratorium,” Lader said.
Development moratorium not likely
The possibility of a moratorium on development was among the requests by many who testified, which was something the county staff didn’t feel was applicable.
Albrecht mentioned the case of 139th Street, which saw moratoriums more than two decades ago. During the pause, a plan for transportation infrastructure was created, which led to building of the overpass and interchange with Interstate 5.
The 179th Street circulation plan under consideration would be such a tool that would usually be the result of a moratorium, but it will already be in place following approval, Albrecht explained.
Orjiako noted funding for the projects is dependent on development happening, so halting it would keep those projects from being built.
“I think, to be honest, the time for master planning would have been prior to the lifting of the urban holding,” Orjiako said.
The Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council’s congestion monitoring program does not list 179th Street as a corridor of concern, Albrecht said. The 139th Street moratoriums resulted from that corridor failing, but 179th Street is not.
A greater issue
Councilor Sue Marshall felt the issues raised by testimony were greater than the transportation plan.
“It was premature, in my opinion, to lift the urban holding, and that is really the decision that we’re now having to grapple with,” Marshall said.
As she lives near the area subject to the circulation plan, she empathized with those who feel the plan is a sign of development without regard to the status quo.
“This is a rural area that suddenly is becoming densely developed … with no master planning, really, to figure (it) out,” Marshall said.
Though Marshall cast the lone vote opposing the plan, both she and Yung hope that, as projects in the circulation plan are built and developments come in, they still meet a level of concurrency the residents can appreciate.
“I think that the transportation plan is good,” Yung said. “I think it’s going to be the implementation process, and making sure that in the time between now and when that infrastructure is complete, that we make sure that we don’t overburden any particular neighborhood with that development.”
