Dedicated bike lanes, back-in diagonal parking, and maybe even a funicular? City Planner Jeff Speck has some ideas to improve the walkability of the City of White Salmon.
Following a two-day visit to the city, where he met with city officials and toured the area, Speck presented possible solutions to the city’s accessibility for non-motorist travel in a special meeting of the city council.
Mayor Marla Keethler told the public that the city brought Speck in because officials are currently undergoing a review of the city’s six-year transportation plan, which will include data that will be used to plan for future transportation projects. She also said that community responses during last year’s project on revising the city’s comprehensive plan highlighted the need for walkability in town.
“One of the top comments we heard from many of you… was about improving the walkability of White Salmon,” Keethler said. “We’re a small town and being able to make connections from your home to the grocery store, the post office, downtown and around town, should not be out of reach.”
From a room in the Inn of the White Salmon, Speck made a one-hour presentation to the city via Zoom, which can be viewed on Mayor Marla Keether’s Facebook page.
“A lot of what I give to you is subjective,” Speck noted. “I’m not doing the hard work of being in the community, in the meetings, conferring with many of you ... This is really kind of my assessment of the facts on the ground independent of what needs to be a larger planning effort.”
Speck started out noting how the city can improve its design by implementing planning theories on walkability. How do you inspire car-centric people to walk instead of drive, he asked. He explained four main points: A walk needs to be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.
“I’m always designing my work around these four categories,” Speck said.
He noted that walkability can be affected by housing and parking options in town. For housing, he noted that empty lots in the downtown core could host upwards of 100 units of housing, but more people brings more cars — to which he explained that addressing the parking problem would be a key factor in the success of the city’s transportation plan.
For parking, he suggested that the city could benefit from installing paid parking stalls. Charging people for parking, he said, would make people make more rational choices when traveling through the city. Another recommendation he made would be to eliminate the on-side parking requirement, which forces developers to provide a certain number of parking stalls per housing unit.
He cited an affordable housing development in Palo Alto that required parking for its users — that requirement increased the housing prices, he said. It also gave tenants the option to bring their cars, adding to the level of traffic that area encounters.
“Often when people clamor for new developments to have parking so that their onstreet parking won’t be threatened by new residents, they’re self-determining that those people who do move in will bring cars with them,” Speck said.
He also recommended additional parking along Main street and Jewett Boulevard. When asked by a member of the public why additional parking stalls would help with the walkability of the city, he responded by saying that streetside parking creates a barrier between traffic and pedestrians, creating a more comfortable environment to walk in. Another recommendation on parking he added is to decouple the sale of parking stall from the sale of a housing unit. He noted that when a housing unit and a parking stall are purchased together, it “buries the price of parking and you don’t want to subsidize it.”
He also noted that the width of Jewett Boulevard is sufficient to install a dedicated bike line going all the way from Bingen city limits at the bottom of the grade and past downtown White Salmon. That would decrease the width of each driving lane, which in effect would slow traffic down through the downtown core.
Having a bike line running through downtown would be dangerous for the bicyclists who would be forced to negotiate with cars backing out of the diagonal parking stalls. To mitigate this, he suggested the city reverse the angles of the parking stalls to make them back-in parking.
Speck went on to make specific recommendations about how to improve White Salmon’s walkability, including purchasing the state highway unimproved plus cash.
The City of White Salmon has been in early talks with Washington Department of Transportation about taking on Highway 141 to the alternate, which runs through the downtown core of the city. The city has already discussed the possibility of taking on the road with improvements but have not yet made a decision.
Speck said the city would be getting a bad deal by taking on the highway and its costs without money to subsidize its improvements. His reasoning was that the city should not be locked into a particular striping or lane design should they want to initiate transportation projects on that stretch of road in the future.
He also recommended retrofitting bike lanes and parking stalls on Main Street, Estes Avenue, and Wauna Avenue to compensate for the additional width of those roads.
Advisory lanes were a spotlight of his presentation, as Speck noted that these would be a safe and affordable option in places where sidewalks are not currently managed or built, including on Spring Street. Advisory lanes force vehicles to give way to an oncoming vehicle and provide striping to give pedestrians dedicated access.
He also recommended that the city start writing grant proposals for stairs going up to the downtown core from Highway 14, and also possibly for a funicular.
A funicular is a cable-operated railway system designed to bring travelers up a steep slope. Keethler has mentioned looking into this mode of transit before during meetings.
Speck noted that adding transit is most logical when the demand for it is already there, instead of installing to induce demand for that connection.
Speck seemed highly interested in a specific recommendation to install a cycle track on Dock Grade Road. Because of the width of the road and that is now going only one way, he said allowing dedicated bike lanes will provide more access to the city.
Finally, he recommended the city charge for premium parking near highly popular destinations, to add 100 units of housing by 2025, to enact minimum development standards, paint more murals, and finally to be uniquely ornamental.
Speck said he enjoyed to ornaments hung by volunteers each year above Dock Grade. He told the city to go wild with the ornaments and to increase the number of ornaments on display in the town as a way to encourage visitors to the city.
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