Drafter
Clerk 12/02/2010
title
A MOTION directing the road services division to establish an implementation plan in 2011 to carry out the findings and recommendations contained in the Strategic Plan for Road Services.
body
WHEREAS, in 2010, the road services division completed a Strategic Plan for Road Services that identified several serious challenges facing the road system over the next five years, including:
1. Annexations that will leave King County with less revenue but with continuing responsibility for rural roadways, which are the most difficult to support;
2. Growing populations in both rural areas and adjacent cities that add traffic to the rural road system and create high service level expectations;
3. Aging county roads that will fail or be at risk of failure because of inadequate funds to perform all needed safety, maintenance and preservation work;
4. New environmental and safety regulations and engineering standards that continue to increase the complexity and cost of supporting the road system; and
5. Climate change trends that have wide-ranging effects on roadway management and could lead to an increase in the number and severity of winter storms and associated impacts on roads, and
WHEREAS, the unincorporated area road system is heavily utilized by people throughout the region, as demonstrated by the more than one million daily trips currently taken on unincorporated roads and the over two hundred fifty thousand people from local cities and neighboring counties who use the unincorporated road network in addition to the more than three hundred thousand residents and taxpayers of the unincorporated area, and
WHEREAS, the post-annexation service area contains a high proportion of King County’s streams, rivers, flood plains, steep slopes, environmentally sensitive areas and higher elevation terrain, so is more susceptible to the impacts of severe storms, flooding, snow and ice, and has a road network with fewer facility r...

Click here for full text