Recently, I attended a daylong meeting in Moses Lake on proposals to expand the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. As I listened to presentations and overviews of research, it became apparent that many of them addressed the wrong problem.
The goal of the Columbia Basin Development League is to get more acres under irrigation, which requires getting more water, from state and federal governments of course.
This, as cities within the present project and in the proposed expansion area find their wells running dry because of drought and long-term over-pumping from underground aquifers.
Yes, the plan calls for recharging those aquifers, with the assumption water will be available from the Columbia River; but that’s another subject for another time.
As I read it, Project Pullman Downtown addresses the wrong problem while ignoring the BIG problem.
A river of traffic flows down Main Street, at flood stage during commutes to and from the Washington State University campus.
Downtown Main Street also is impacted by floods of cars on Grand Avenue, from Bishop Boulevard to NE Terre View Drrive.
Without question, many things in the plan would be nice. Some may even be effective. But slowing down traffic on Main isn’t the right answer to downtown merchants’ problems.
Traffic already is slow on Grand, creating traffic jams as big as I’ve seen in Seattle, and that certainly hasn’t fostered commercial interests.
Project Pullman Downtown calls for “Right-size[ing]” downtown streets. I read that as Orwellian rhetoric, inasmuch as it calls for wrong-sizing a state highway.
Highways are built to move vehicular traffic, not to choke it down. Yet, Project Pullman Downtown calls for slowing down cars to give pedestrians more space.
Project Pullman Downtown calls for reduction of Main from three to two lanes of traffic.
It calls for wider sidewalks for pedestrians, and then proposes to litter them up with table and chair dining areas.
Jane Jacobs, author of the book, “Dark Age Ahead,” asserts that traffic engineers, economists and other credentialed professionals are poorly educated by today’s universities.
She says traffic engineers often misapply data in pursuit of fashionable trends in traffic design. The math may be good, but its application is faulty.
Slow-traffic, people-centric, right-size, walkable downtown, quick wins, curb bulbs, vibrant retail, ad infinitum, are in vogue with traffic engineers. But much of this fantastical dream to change downtown Pullman will turn out to be a horrid nightmare if the current vision is pursued.
The river of cars cannot be damned up and geography doesn’t permit rerouting it, especially not the flood of WSU commuters.
Pullman has turned down opportunities to secure right-of-way for a northern bypass. A southern bypass is pie in the sky, and even if it materializes it doesn’t address the humongous WSU commuter aspect of the traffic problem.
Semi-trucks will still have to negotiate Pullman’s traffic mess and delivery trucks will still have to block a lane of traffic to deliver goods to stores on Main. Won’t that be fun when the highway is reduced from three to two lanes.
The dream plan also reduces downtown parking and irrationally proposes to get shoppers to walk from parking lots. Last I knew, there are, or were, plans to reduce parking on Main and jam up commuter traffic with a Starbucks drive-through.
The Pullman Chamber of Commerce, downtown business owners, and the City Council will pursue their fantastical dream come hell or high water unless residents wake up to the nightmare ahead and get very vocal about it.
Downtown Pullman merchants certainly have legitimate problems, and they have my sympathy and a share of my discretionary dollars; but the glitzy Project Downtown isn’t the right answer.
Day is a retired Washington State faculty member and a Pullman resident since 1972. He enjoys a life-long interest in agriculture, history, law, politics and religion. He encourages email — pro and con — to terence@moscow.com.
