Parkway With An Attitude -- Coal Creek Road Has Gotten Itself Into A Real Jam

NEWCASTLE

Years ago, the only traffic jam on Coal Creek Parkway was the annual spring stampede of high-school track-team runners.

Life was a little slower on the residential roadway then, with only two lanes and a four-way stop sign at its busiest intersection.

Now, however, so many cars drive Coal Creek Parkway that transportation planners have rated it as the Eastside's most congested and dangerous arterial.

"You can't get out of your home until the traffic literally stops," says Truman Clay, who lives off the parkway near Southeast 76th Street.

The traffic has forced many residents to go out of their way to find intersections controlled by a traffic light, where they have a better chance of entering the flow. Some people rely on shortcuts through neighborhood streets. Others, who live along the parkway, have no choice but to put up with the problem.

The heavy traffic also challenges city officials, who must plan for a downtown corridor with a major thoroughfare slicing through the heart of it.

About 26,000 cars use the parkway each day. Most - around 85 percent - belong to out-of-town drivers who use the parkway as an alternative to Interstate 405.

Afternoon commuters heading south on I-405 suffer the Coal Creek Parkway problem without ever leaving the freeway - cars lining up for the Coal Creek exit regularly are backed up on Interstate 90.

The congestion has caught the attention of the Eastside Transportation Partnership, a regional lobbying group made up of local officials that helps jurisdictions win grants for transportation improvements.

The partnership is studying 108 of the Eastside's most congested major roads as part of an updated transportation-improvement plan. The roads are assessed under three sets of criteria that range from the number of accidents to funding sources for projects.

The highest-ranking projects, in theory, are the ones that would receive the most funding, says Redmond City Councilwoman Nancy McCormick, who heads the group. Although a final screening will occur before a draft report is made public later this fall, Coal Creek Parkway so far has scored the most points for the first round of tests, which looks at congestion and accidents.

Other Eastside thoroughfares that received high ratings are Issaquah-Fall City Road on the East Sammamish Plateau, Front Street in Issaquah (where a proposed Southeast Bypass project is being planned), Union Hill Road in Redmond, the Woodinville-Duvall Road, Highway 202 in Redmond and King County, 124th Avenue Northeast in Kirkland, and 140th Avenue Northeast in Bellevue.

Funding for improvements to Coal Creek Parkway has been hard to come by. Construction, including widening the road and installing more traffic lights, would cost the city an estimated $40 million. Newcastle would have to pay for 10 percent of that, but Mayor Ron Todd said the city doesn't have $4 million.

Newcastle recently was denied two grants from the state Transportation Improvement Board, largely because the project lacked a design and funding base, says Dan Rude, deputy director of the board.

Newcastle was also passed over in the state's two-year transportation-funding cycle for 1998-2000, which means it won't be considered for grant money until after the turn of the century.

That has left city officials frustrated. They say Newcastle is at a disadvantage because the small town is forced to compete with larger cities in three counties (King, Pierce and Snohomish) for certain grants.

"We're at the bottom of the food chain for . . . funding," Todd said.

Because so much of the traffic comes from non-Newcastle residents, other jurisdictions, such as Renton, Bellevue, King County and the state, should pitch in, says Councilman Sonny Putter, one of two Newcastle council members who sit on the Eastside Transportation Partnership committee.

In 1996, 61 of the 106 car accidents in Newcastle were reported on Coal Creek Parkway. Todd says there's been about a 10 percent increase in minor accidents in the past year.

There's only one safe place to cross the street in Newcastle, city planners say, and that's at the intersection at Southeast 72nd Street and Coal Creek Parkway, which is controlled by a stoplight.

"It's definitely a mean road," said longtime resident Carol Friederichs, who works at Starbucks. She says the parkway is so dangerous she drives her car to go to the bank across the street.

Part of the problem is a choke point just south of Southeast 72nd and Coal Creek Parkway, where the parkway's four lanes become two.

The city is looking at short-term solutions, such as widening the road, adding new stop signals and creating neighborhood access roads, which would provide other routes to shops. Other options are creating overpasses and underpasses.

But the city will need more than short-term solutions as Newcastle begins to design a downtown corridor.

City officials hope to create a business district that's safe for pedestrians and bikers.

"It's a big challenge," said Charlie Wittenberg, planning administrator. "We really don't have too many alternatives for diverting traffic to other areas."

The business corridor would straddle both sides of Coal Creek Parkway and be centered near Southeast 72nd and the parkway, where two strip malls already sit. The city is looking at pedestrian and biking trails that would link residents in the China Creek and Lake Boren areas south of town and those on the eastern edges of the city to downtown. City officials also are kicking around the idea of building apartments or condominiums above businesses.

Despite the headaches, not everyone hates the traffic.

Helen Ferrelli, owner of Daniel's Drycleaning on the parkway, says many of her clients drop in to escape the crush of late-afternoon commuters. When Ferrelli opened her shop 11 years ago, she spent a lot on advertising. These days, people discover the business, tucked between Safeway and a string of small shops, as they sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

"As far as business is concerned, we like it," Ferrelli says.