The city of Hoquiam has been awarded a $1.44 million state grant to install bike lanes and sidewalks from about the west end of the Riverside Bridge through the State Route 109/Highway 101 intersection and west to Emerson Elementary School.
“This is a 100% grant, no city match,” said City Administrator Brian Shay at Monday’s City Council meeting. “To get a grant with no required match is pretty big.”
The grant is from the Washington State Department of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School program, which is designed to provide technical assistance and funding to provide for routes to school that encourage students to walk and bike to class. Since 2005, the program has awarded more than $70 million for 182 projects around the state.
It’s a highly competitive grant; since 2005 more than $242 million in requests have been submitted.
“We’ve in the last decade applied to the program two other times unsuccessfully,” said Shay.
One of those times was for a similar project that would have funded sidewalks on Karr Avenue from Lincoln Street to Emerson Elementary.
Requests for proposals for preliminary engineering were scheduled to go out Tuesday, said Shay; some of the specifics of the project have yet to be hammered out, but Shay was able to walk through what the project is likely to look like.
“As you cross the Riverside Bridge there will be some sort of traffic device — with this all being state highway the Department of Transportation will have final say — in the intersection that will help divert people to the bike lane and the road to the right you take north to Ocean Shores, or around it to Sixth Street” into downtown, said Shay. “The bike lane starts there.”
At the turn onto State Route 109/Emerson Avenue, the roadway is currently two lanes heading west for about a block and a half. The project will reduce that to one lane for that short stretch.
“That will provide on-street parking at Central Play Park, and the bike lane,” said Shay.
A large improvement will be along the Swanson property, the vacant grassy lot where the high school and, later, the YMCA used to stand near the Emerson Avenue/Simpson Avenue intersection — all new sidewalks on two full blocks, the bike path, and some new traffic devices installed to make it safer to cross the street at Central Elementary School.
From there west to Emerson Elementary there will be a 10-foot shared use path installed, “which most likely will be the existing sidewalk to the curb,” said Shay. A shared-use path is designed to accommodate pedestrian and bike traffic.
“There are so many benefits to the project. One big one, in addition to the bike improvements and safety improvements for pedestrians, is the sidewalk in front of the old high school side have been in disrepair for a long time,” said Shay. “It is one of the best undeveloped economic development sites in the city.”
The sidewalk and safety improvements could attract developments, such as a car lot, apartments, any number of potential uses.It’s a complex project that will take some time to design for maximum benefit and to fulfill the requirements of the grant. Shay said the grant calls for construction to begin in the summer of 2023 with completion likely later that year.
