Residents urge Clark County Council to enforce traffic concurrency as development accelerates

Several residents and technical witnesses pressed the Clark County Council on June 10 to enforce Washington’s concurrency requirements after presenting traffic studies they say show corridors already over capacity.

At a council meeting in Vancouver, citizens including Bridgetette Schwarz, Heidi Poso and retired civil engineer Dean Hargusimer described traffic congestion in the Fairgrounds/Salmon Creek and Brush Prairie areas and warned that county staff have been using alternate analysis methods to approve projects that should be denied under the county’s concurrency ordinance.

“Clark County lifted the urban growth boundary for high density development,” said Bridgetette Schwarz, a sixth-generation resident in the area, describing how planned development around NW 179th Street has outpaced the transportation infrastructure. Heidi Poso told the council that the county’s concurrency metrics include a volume-to-capacity threshold of 90 percent for road segments and an intersection delay threshold of about four minutes (two signal cycles), and that her review of dozens of traffic studies shows failures at key corridors.

Retired civil engineer Dean Hargusimer said the concurrency standards themselves are not the problem but the county’s implementation is. “These modifications have resulted in development approvals that otherwise should have been denied,” he said, urging the council to investigate procedures and oversight before changing policy.

Other residents pressed the council to delay any interim ordinance intended to raise concurrency thresholds until the public has time to review the proposal. Resident Erica Frasier said an applicant’s traffic study shows Northeast 119th Street at “1.09 times capacity before that project adds even a single trip,” and warned that changing the scoring would simply let failing corridors pass on paper while congestion remains.

Jim Burn, citing guidance from the Municipal Research and Services Center, noted state law and administrative code cited in the public comments: RCW 36.70.070 and WAC 365-196-84A describe the Growth Management Act’s concurrency expectations and the circumstances in which transportation improvements or commitments are required at the time of development or within six years. “The GMA requires that transportation improvements or strategies to accommodate development impacts be made concurrently with land development,” Burn said.

At least one speaker criticized staff methods directly. Steve Thalberg argued that staff are applying newly developed methodologies to achieve concurrency approvals even when segment volume-to-capacity ratios exceed the 0.9 standard, adding: “Lipstick on a pig still results in a pig.”

Council members did not adopt any policy changes that day, but during council reports a member requested a work session on 179th Street to have staff present the transportation improvement plan schedule, zoning and comp-plan projections and preliminary options for possible sub-area planning. Councilors asked staff to prepare materials for a July briefing so the council can evaluate the data before considering code changes.

The public record provided to councilors includes traffic analyses and the speakers’ submitted materials; speakers urged the council either to deny projects that cannot meet concurrency standards or to pursue comprehensive-plan changes rather than retroactively legalizing administrative practices.

Next steps: the council agreed to request staff briefings and preliminary materials for a work session on 179th Street in July; no ordinance or council vote on concurrency code changes took place at the June 10 meeting.