With a preferred alternative selected, the East Aberdeen Mobility Project will slowly move forward.
Following the open house on Wednesday, the project will move into its second phase which begins with a preliminary engineering design, then funding and right-of-way acquisition, and finally construction.
Along the way to its eventual construction, still several years away, leadership of the project will change hands.
The City of Aberdeen has official jurisdiction over the project, with it being a city roadway said a spokesman for David Evan and Associates Inc., of Olympia, the consultant group hired for the project.
To date the Grays Harbor Council of Governments has overseen the project on the city’s behalf, functioning as an organizational body hiring and guiding the consulting group, scheduling public meetings, receiving public input, and building relations between federal, state, and local agencies and government departments.
The council is a planning agency that coordinates transportation and regional projects impacting more than one city, district or agency. In the case of the Mobility Project, the council has been working closely with the City of Aberdeen, the Port of Grays Harbor and the state Department of Transportation.
The council will step into the background as the preferred alternative rolls into the second phase in January 2015.
A rough schedule shows the preliminary engineering design beginning next month and lasting through next fall followed by another open house to update the public.
During that same timeframe, the Council of Governments, working in the background, will pursue construction funding and grants — likely federal highway grants, state Transportation Improvement Board grants and matching cash from local entities including the Port and city.
After the open house late next year, the final design will be drafted and could be complete by the end of 2016, if all goes to plan.
Right-of-way acquisition will take place during the final design. Another open house will be held before construction begins.
Throughout the entire process, environmental investigations and permitting will be sought.
Roadblocks
It’s unlikely the process will stay true to the current timeline. Environmental findings, objections and lawsuits to right-of-way acquisition could impede progress at any time.
“There are 150 things that can slow progress between this point and the completed project,” Council of Governments Executive Director Vicki Cummings said last week.
The project was identified in the US 101 Regional Circulation Project in 2007, which noted rail congestion issues throughout the corridor, before the currently proposed crude-by-rail projects at the Port were on the table.
The goal of the project is to alleviate vehicular traffic backups on the highway.
When rail traffic blocks access to the businesses, vehicular traffic waits on the highway, bringing vehicles to a standstill whether they’re driving to a business or passing through.
Improved access to private property despite potentially increased rail traffic due to crude-by-rail operations will be a benefit of the project, but that benefit was not a priority.
Since 2007, rail traffic has continued to impede vehicular traffic through the corridor. The Port, where nearly all the cargo is headed, expects further growth in rail traffic.
Port rail capacity is currently at less than 30 percent, Port Executive Director Gary Nelson said last week, and could increase 5-10 percent, not including increases from proposed projects like the three crude oil terminals currently undergoing environmental studies.
According to federal law, rail has priority over vehicular traffic. Engineers have noted it’s safer and less costly to alter the roads rather than rail. One of the main issues facing rail rerouting is that rail cannot be impeded, meaning another track would have to be built to accommodate the trains while the current track undergoes construction as a possible solution.
Development of the design alternatives was funded with a federal grant amounting to $250,000 through the Surface Transportation Program, secured on the city’s behalf by the Council of Governments, and a match made by the Port for a little more than $39,000.
Total project cost is estimated at more than $11 million, funded through federal, state and, hopefully, local participation.
Construction could be as far away as six years.
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