Celebrate the Pedestrian, Close North Harborview Drive

For most of my life, the term "pedestrian", whether a noun or an adjective, referred to something second rate, boring, common and best left undone. But, if there is one rule I've learned in the last 20 years about community health, good transportation design and urban quality of life, it is this: The needs of the pedestrian come first.

So, I get excited about quality pedestrian improvements.

The most used public recreational amenities on the Gig Harbor Peninsula are parks and conservation spaces? ? ?

Nope.

The most used recreational space on the Gig Harbor Peninsula, by both residents inside the city, outside the city and visitors is our city sidewalk system.

So, considering this, I'm excited about the possibility of improving our urban quality of life and our transportation system around the bay. The possibility of creating safer parking, improved traffic flow, environmental sensitivity, safe public parking space and improved pedestrian opportunity by closing traffic on North Harborview Drive is just such an opportunity.

Not often, simultaneously, do we have an opportunity to decrease our wait times while driving, reduce previous damage to the environment and improve our pedestrian and recreational options. 

Building a roundabout at the west end of Austin Street, routing all traffic behind , and building safe, convenient parking between Donkey Creek Park and the is just such an opportunity.

(Click here to see the new road options for Donkey Creek Park.)

I want to make this change, even if it costs all local tax money because business in the immediate area and on North Harborview Drive will prosper from this change. Also, previous public investments in Donkey Creek Park and will be improved permanently and dramatically.

Needing scant local money, however, this project can be paid with dollars that would otherwise go to the Department of Corrections or the Department of Ecology or to a state interchange, or some such state thing. Moreover, this project can be paid for in part with federal funds that would otherwise go to Seattle, Maine or Washington D.C.

This is a project that maximizes my local tax dollar. It buys something that lasts, unlike overlay paving, which the city fathers also propose for similar state funds. [There are no city mothers in this town.] Moreover, it is a project that is important to the state and federal government, or the would not have received grant dollars in the first place.

At the , citizens were told that system level of service using a roundabout option on the west end of Austin Street would be Level of Service B compared to C for the other options. What wasn’t said was that sometimes on a regular day the level of service at the current intersection of North Harborview and Harborview--across the street from the burned out Le Bistro--functions at Level of Service E or F. In simplest terms this means: A=Free flow, B=Reasonably free flow, C=Stable flow, D=Approaching unstable flow, E=Unstable flow, F=Forced or breakdown flow.

And that is today. What about 20 years from now? I say this change is not something that needs to be stopped, it needs to be made. We deserve a quality pedestrian system and we deserve a transportation system that actually works, now and in the future.