Sammamish City Council has approved a contract for up to $12,000 for a consultant to conduct a citywide traffic count.
The program will include turning movement counts at 17 intersections during both morning and evening peak hours, and seven day average daily traffic counts at 38 locations.
City of Sammamish engineer Laura Philpot told the councilors that these figures are used in building the city’s transportation model, and to provide information during grant and funding applications for new roads projects.
The survey is estimated to cost just over $9,000, but the $12,000 budget will allow the addition of up to 10 additional sites.
The council, minus the absent Michele Petitti, approved the contract 6 – 0 at their most recent meeting on Feb. 16.
The contract approval was initially on the council’s consent agenda. But deputy mayor Nancy Whitten requested further discussion of the item, to express her concern about a number of streets that were close to failing traffic concurrency standards.
Whitten referred to technical memorandum from consultant David Evans and Associates in May of 2008, which claimed that a number of roadways in the city would be unable to cope with the increases in traffic likely to result from residential and commercial development in the proposed Town Center.
Councilmember Tom Odell referred to a number of traffic trouble-spots that he hoped to see studied, specifically the intersection of 228th Avenue NE and NE 8th Street/Inglewood Hill Road.
Councilmember Mark Cross said a clear understanding of traffic was “a livability issue.”
“How does the city feel during its most congested days?”
Judging from the general feeling of motorists in the city, the answer to that would be “not very good.”
Late last year, Kamuron Gurol, Director of Community Development at the City of Sammamish, said that traffic, roads and parking are the biggest problems facing the city.
Philpot said she hoped the count would be conducted in March.
Last year’s count, for which the city paid a similar amount, was conducted during construction on East Lake Sammamish Parkway, meaning the figures were a distorted representation of actual traffic patterns in the city.
A number of councilors stressed the importance of conducting the count during a period when there were no major road projects on and around the Plateau, to get a clearer idea of natural traffic patterns. The count will be conducted before construction begins on the Eastlake Sammamish Parkway Phase 1b. However the 244th Avenue NE project will still be in progress in March, meaning that any figures taken during this time in this important corridor are likely to be less than accurate representations.
