Your Input is Wanted on a Highway System Plan by WSDOT

Now's the time your voice can be heard regarding roads in Washington.

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The Washington State Department of Transportation is seeking your input, as a draft Highway System Plan is open for public comment. This is your opportunity to experience the process transportation officials go through while developing a future highway system in Washington.

The Highway System Plan is used to make investment recommendations to the Legislature that will result in a future highway system that is sound, safe and smart. This plan used scenario planning to test how different funding levels would affect different outcomes.

WSDOT worked with transportation professionals and communities across the state to narrow down the options using all information available to create a recommendation that would balance the benefits and drawbacks. WSDOT worked with staff from each program to determine future performance and understand how funding would affect performance.

After combining all the data on nine of the highway programs, public survey participants were asked how they would distribute available funding for the programs. Results from the survey showed that people are concerned about three main categories for Washington highways.

And there are three scenarios for investing remaining funds.

With all three scenarios including adequate funding for repair and funding court-mandated fish passage barrier correction, we explored how each scenario balanced the remaining funds between safety and efficiency strategies and highway expansion.

The first scenario was based on the balance preferred by most members of the public during the engagement process: committing two-thirds of the remaining funding to improving the safety and efficiency of the existing system and one-third to highway expansion strategies. We compared this scenario to a stronger shift to safety and efficiency strategies and to a complete shift to safety and efficiency strategies.

The draft Highway System Plan is available for public comment.

They want to hear from you. Visit the HSP website and visit the online open house. A link will be provided to join the virtual public meeting from 2 to 3 p.m. on November 30th. Public comments will be accepted through 5 pm December 18th.