ODOT speed study proposed

At a regular county board meeting Oct. 15, Commission Chair Steve Kramer said, “We’re just traveling too fast, and we can’t afford to lose another life on our highways.”

Since 2017, five fatalities have occurred on Highway 197 between The Dalles and Dufur.

“The reason that we’re doing this is we’ve had conversations with our school district in Dufur with a problem intersection, Highway 197 and Five Mile or Steel Road,” Kramer said, “and then a request from a resident producer on Highway 216 are the folks that are most interested in getting these speeds reduced.”

Kramer said he initially planned to ask ODOT to change the speeds in the three-to-four mile part of Highway 197 that junctions with Five Mile Road for the sake of school buses and drivers.

This comes after residents of Five Mile Road and the surrounding area spoke out this summer about dangerous long-haul truck traffic headed to the Wasco County Landfill.

According to a Columbia Gorge News investigation, traffic headed to the landfill from the Portland Metro Area has quadrupled over the past 10 years, increasing the truck traffic to hundreds of semis a day.

Smith explained once ODOT begins working on the county’s request, they analyze traffic, crash history and other data points to determine whether to move forward with conducting the road study.

“It’s not just one step rubber stamp. There’s several steps in the engineering study and the traffic data, especially crash data. It does take a long time,” Smith said. “But I think it’s a good process.”

Kramer said the hope is to return Highway 197 to its original speed of 55 miles per hour, “that this particular highway was designed for.”

Commissioner Scott Hege clarified, “We don’t determine what the speed limit is on the road,” noting that ODOT’s determination might be differ from the preferred 55 miles per hour.

“Our congressman, Cliff Benz, said to me at a meeting one time that he wished he would have never raised the speed limit or voted for the package to raise Highway 197 speed limits,” Kramer said. “So I got his support for reduction.”