I cannot begin to express my passion about getting a roundabout at Tolt Hill Road and State Highway 203. The main reason I’m running for Carnation City Council again is so that I see the plans for this project go through. The intersection is not only unsafe, it got a grade “F” from WSDOT. A grade “F” means that cars need to wait in traffic anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours before being able to drive safely again.
The Safety Committee and the Economic Development Committee have seriously considered a citizen led open meeting where we invite both King County and WSDOT representatives in order to hear our complaints and concerns and ask “why they haven’t made any actionable steps?”
The Economic Development Committee, (which consists of Ryan Burrel, and I,) spend most of our time, looking at grants and contacting our local representatives in order to make this happen.
Here is what we have found so far:
-the roundabout will cost about $3.5 million. The planner time and permitting process would cost roughly $1.5 million of that money. There are some snags in the way before anything could be built. (For example, the roundabout does not meet some SEPA regulations right now because part of the areas in a wetland.)
- the intersection is on a county road that intersects a state highway. I believe that, even though the roundabout is not in the City of Carnation limits, the City is made of people and our people only have one way out, and one way in to town. For me it’s a huge safety concern in case Tolt Dam ever breaks.
So far, this is what Ryan and I have done:
1. Contacted Sarah Perry‘s office and King County roads as a whole.
2, I have been contacting the Washington State Department of Transportation since 2016 just as a citizen, far before I was a on City Council.
3. We have contacted all of our state representatives. Currently, we are in the 12th district. Representatives Goehner and Steele and Senator Hawkins represent us. Sen. Hawkins has been incredibly helpful in finding firm grant opportunities and giving ideas on how to get this roundabout.
4. I have been on the Snoqualmie Valley Transportation Committee and also the Snoqualmie Valley Transportation Task Force, which is an inter-jurisdictional transportation, advocacy group. I have learned a lot about grants through this process.
5. I have asked City Planners from Redmond, Sammamish and North Bend how their cities funded roundabouts.
In result, we do have a car tracker at where the roundabout would need to be in order to get accurate traffic numbers.
The current action step is figure out how many cars use that intersection. Next, the grant writing process will start. Here are the main intrigues that we plan on using for finding:
1. “Move ahead Washington” funding that was recently passed through the House and Senate.
2. FEMA safety grants (due to the flood risk)
3. The United States Department of Transportation has a grant program that we might qualify for because it does not include the caveat of walk ability to public schools.