City council passes transit plan that prioritizes buses and crosswalks
If the Sammamish City Council has its way, transit will become a big part of how residents travel to and from the city in the future.
During its March 19 meeting, the council approved the Sammamish Transit Plan by a 6-1 vote, with Councilmember Kent Treen delivering the lone dissenting vote. This decision occurred after a public hearing at the March 5 and March 19 meetings.
The Transit Plan assesses current transit conditions and lists short and long-term capital projects for the city staff to focus on that will improve transit.
Three of the six projects are short-term and will be completed in the one-to-five-year timeframe. One of these projects is a Crosswalk Study to assess where the city should add crosswalks for pedestrians. The Bus Stop Amenity program, another short-term project, aims to make each bus stop safer and more comfortable by including more pedestrian lighting, paved landing areas, trash cans, bike racks, and display boards. The third project, the Transit Signal Priority, will reduce the waiting times for buses at traffic signals by upgrading those signals to prioritize buses as they approach intersections.
Longer-term projects in the five-to-20-year span include road improvements that will speed up the movement of buses along 228th Avenue and Sahalee Way, and the relocation of several bus stops. It also includes the Mobility Hub program, which is an effort to add small and large park and rides throughout the city that will better connect drivers and cyclists to transit routes. The city is also aiming to introduce a neighborhood shuttle that will connect residents from their homes to transit routes.
Councilmember Amy Lam believes this plan would support the city’s other large-scale initiatives.
“When we discuss various plans, the Climate Action Plan, and the Housing Diversification Toolkit, invariably transit always comes up,” Lam said. “Starting sooner rather than later, I think, is a huge advantage.”
Councilmember Sid Gupta, who does not own a car and relies on transit to get around the city, also supported the Transit Plan.
“With the potential route of the circulator shuttle, I think connections down to Eastlake Parkway and East Lake Sammamish Trail, that we’ve been looking for ways as a community to get people safely down the hill,” Gupta said. “Providing another way where you can load up your bike and get down to the trail and make use of that, and then it can connect to the light rail, I think will be valuable.”
However, Councilmember Kent Treen, who voted against the plan, believed the work that went into the Transit Plan was premature, considering the city is scheduled to approve a new Comprehensive Plan by December.
“We can keep the data and the information that we gathered from the Transit Plan, but it was something that I didn’t agree with whenever we started the whole idea of spending taxpayers’ money to do something ahead of a comprehensive plan update, that then is gonna turn into a transportation master plan,” Treen said. “So anything that we do here is just something that we paid for now, and that’s gonna change.”
