King County Road Services 2009–2014 Adopted Capital Improvement Program (CIP)

Introduction, program goals and key 2009–2014 issues

The 2009–2014 Capital Improvement Program (CIP) supports the Road Services Division’s (RSD) vision to be a leader, partner and provider of local and regional transportation services and to play a significant role in shaping regional transportation policy.

The primary goal of the CIP continues to be construction of improvements to existing roadways to provide safe, efficient and environmentally sound transportation facilities for the movement of goods, services and the general public. The CIP is developed to provide safe roads and bridges, to be consistent with federal, state, and county land use policies and plans and to meet identified transportation needs. This CIP addresses the needs and deficiency issues of the RSD’s facilities with an eye to the future of King County.

The goals identified in the RSD’s Core Business Goals that relate to the CIP are:

• Lead and partner in planning and carrying out local and regional transportation solutions that support mobility, accessibility and growth management.
• Provide a high level of travel safety through effective design, construction, operation and maintenance of roadways and other transportation facilities.
• Achieve high levels of customer satisfaction through the identification and timely response to roadway and other transportation facilities service needs, and provide timely, consistent and clear two-way communication tailored to the transportation needs of customers and citizens.
• Deliver projects and services on time and within budget through timely, efficient and cost effective management of resources.
• Ensure the design, construction, operation and maintenance of roadways and other transportation facilities are done in an environmentally responsible manner.

The adopted 2009-2014 RSD CIP totals $344 million for the six-year period, including a new appropriation in 2009 of $62 million. The road and bridge improvements reflected in this program are consistent with the principles and policies of the adopted King County Comprehensive Plan (KCCP).

Financial planning and policy overview

The Roads Six-Year CIP is primarily financed by the contribution from the County Road Fund (Fund 103), various State and Federal transportation grants, and developer mitigation payments.

Within the current constraints of the unincorporated Road Levy 1% annual growth limit, the county’s share of the eroding State gas tax revenues, and the significant Federal underfunding of transportation as reflected in diminishing grant revenues, the county is losing significant ground in its battle to preserve aged infrastructure and to modernize and make safer its heavily used road system. As population and economic growth continues, the demands increase on the county’s system of roads and bridges necessary to sustain that growth. The current funding level is not keeping up with the soaring costs of materials, fuel, concrete and steel and the additional wear and tear caused by increased vehicular and truck traffic on facilities that are old, and getting older.

In the face of this dilemma, some tough choices are being recommended in the Roads Six-Year CIP including:

Pavement overlay: In the past several years, RSD has been able to optimize the lifecycle of the pavement on its approximately 1800 miles of roadway with a sustainable pavement overlay program. The significant increase in the price of oil this year, and no significant price decrease anticipated in future years, makes it impossible to continue to meet the goal of 40-45 miles of roadway receiving pavement overlay each year. There was an increase of 43% in the costs of asphalt from 2007 – 2008 and that number is only expected to grow. The proposed 2009-2014 CIP includes a shift to chip seal on the local access roads, instead of full overlay. This change will also result in a savings of approximately $3 million over the six year program to free up resources needed to begin programming roadway reconstruction of road segments that are failing and cannot be sustained any longer simply by applying pavement overlay.

Road reconstruction: The vast majority of the roadways within the county’s road system are well over 70 years in age. The underlying beds of many of these old roadways are now deteriorating at an accelerated rate and not built for the heavy loads and high volumes of today’s traffic. This proposed budget includes some of the highest priority candidate locations for reconstruction. For example, in 2009 design will begin on a project that will reconstruct and rehabilitate a nearly 2.5 mile segment of the SE Summit-Landsburg Road.

The RSD continues to seek local and/or regional funding to replace the previous loss in 2004 of the $15 Local Option Vehicle License Fee, which provided the county with its sole source of funding available to partner with cities across jurisdictional boundaries to invest in regionally significant arterial corridors. With the approval by the state legislature in 2007 of House Bill 1858, signed by Governor Gregoire, the counties and cities have regained authority to levy a local option vehicle fee of up to $20 by councilmatic vote and up to $100 by a vote of the people, but only through the creation of a Transportation Benefit District (TBD). The TBD also can incorporate sales taxes, tolls and impact fees to create a funding package to make specified capital improvements when approved by voters. Current law also would allow a lifting of the 1% levy lid with voter approval.

Project prioritization methodology

There are two primary prioritization processes that provide input to the CIP: the Bridge Priority Process published in the Annual Bridge Report and the Transportation Needs Report (TNR).

The Annual Bridge Report includes the prioritized list of county bridges for replacement or rehabilitation. The criteria used to evaluate these priorities include: sufficiency rating, seismic rating, geometrics, hydraulics, load limits, traffic safety, serviceability, importance, useful life and structural concern. This report is updated annually and submitted to the King County Council for review.

In prioritizing capital investments for roads and bridges, the RSD first looks to the transportation policies adopted in the KCCP. Those policies inform the prioritization processes used to develop the TNR. The RSD places a greater emphasis and a higher priority on projects providing safe and efficient roadways and preserving the road system infrastructure.

The TNR includes the RSD’s safety related priority arrays, including High Accident Location, High Accident Road Segment, Pedestrian Safety and Mobility, Guardrail Priority and Signal Priority. It also contains the priorities for needed capacity projects. One of the processes of the TNR screens out projects that are cost prohibitive or not buildable due to environmental restrictions. The TNR was last updated in the Executive Recommended TNR 2008, which was transmitted to the King County Council on March 1, 2008. The projects within the proposed CIP have been found to be consistent with the TNR.

Growth management and comprehensive plan issues

The county is required by the Washington State Growth Management Act  and the KCCP to specify transportation levels of service and enforce them through a concurrency management system. This is to ensure that new growth is allowed to occur only if the transportation infrastructure necessary to support the additional traffic that will be generated by new development is in place.

The Transportation Concurrency Management program is a key tool used by the county to ensure that transportation facilities to serve new development are available or there is a financial commitment in place to construct the needed improvements within six years. Financial commitment is established if construction of the improvements is programmed in the adopted RSD Six-Year CIP.

The Comprehensive Plan distinguishes between building new capacity projects for existing and pipeline development (vested in permitting), and those projects needed to serve future new growth. Capital projects that increase roadway capacity to accommodate existing and pipeline development are given a higher priority than projects that increase roadway capacity to accommodate future development.

Projects included in the RSD 2009-2014 Capital Improvement Program have been evaluated for consistency with the KCCP – safety and preservation are the highest priorities, with added road system capacity addressed only when those more critical system priorities are responsibly funded.

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