May 29, 2015

King County Rural Roads: How They Got So Bad

Dear friends,

I thought you'd be interested in the KUOW article below. I am very concerned about the state of our county unincorporated roads, many of which are in our district.

I've also included an interview I taped recently with Enrique Cerna of King County TV. This interview goes into detail about the entire issue and I encourage you to watch it.

The current formula for funding the maintenance of our unincorporated roads is NOT adequate to cover the needed costs. Repairing and preserving these roads will only get more expensive as they continue to deteriorate.

I hope there will be a path to a solution with our legislators in Olympia. I need your help on this issue!

It's always a pleasure to serve the residents of District 3.

Kathy Lambert

Here is the video that I recently taped with Enrique Cerna for KCTV's "King County Connects."

Story by JOSHUA MCNICHOLS, KUOW. Photos by KUOW Photos/Joshua McNichols, unless noted otherwise.

This county road between Maple Valley and Issaquah may not look like a major traffic corridor. But come rush hour, it's bumper to bumper on county roads like this as commuters seek out alternate routes to shave precious minutes off grueling commutes.


In East King County, a critical piece of infrastructure is falling apart: the county road system. That's 1,500 miles of mostly two-lane roads. Stretched out, they would reach from Canada to Mexico. There's no money to repair them properly. So the county's going to have to lower the speed limits and eventually shut some of them down.

It comes at a time when county roads are more heavily used than ever.

It's common, in East King County, to live in one place and work in another. Karen Dawson and her two boys had just moved to their first home in Maple Valley. It was a place they could afford, close to Seattle and the airport. The kids' school in Bellevue was 35 miles away. On the very first night of their commute, they saw how vast that distance really is as they crawled along in bumper-to-bumper traffic most of the way home. At one point, Karen's youngest son cried out from the back seat, "Why did we move so far?"


Karen Dawson and her two boys share a 1.5- to 2-hour commute every day after work. She says it's brought them closer together as a family.

"I felt awful," Dawson says, "because I didn't think it was that far." But Dawson soon learned her family's commute would take 1.5 to 2 hours every evening. They try to make the most of it. "We have really good conversations," says Dawson, "and I am really close with my sons." Sometimes, her sons will sleep. One of them turns on the light and does his homework.

Karen quickly learned a strategy employed by many suburban drivers. When the state highways get completely backed up, you pull off and take county roads. The picturesque route can shave off a few minutes. Along the way, Dawson says, it's horses and cows and people that clearly intentionally moved to a rural area, "and they've got bumper-to-bumper traffic all morning long."

The country road system isn't designed for this kind of traffic. In fact, it was never designed at all.

On this map by King County, yellow lines indicate roads in danger of closing in future years. Triangles indicate bridges that could close. When the roads close depends on the severity of future winters. (Map by King County/ESRI)

The county inherited its network of rural roads from logging companies, mining companies and developers who said, "Here, have a road. Now you take care of it." Some of those roads date back to the 1880s. Many were built in unstable places, next to rivers and on hillsides. Many weren't built to modern standards. Tony Ledbetter is in charge of maintaining those roads. He figures that in his time with King County, he's walked every foot of them.


Tony Ledbetter is in charge of maintaining King County roads. His budget covers mandatory projects (projects required for risk abatement or environmental regulations), but does not provide enough discretionary spending to reverse the decline of the county road system.

He's in his truck, checking up on different job sites, starting with a spot where half a road broke off and fell down the hill. Traffic has to take turns navigating the single lane that remains. With the traffic cones behind us, Ledbetter grows thoughtful. "You think, 'This is pretty rural, it's wooded and all that.' And then, you come around the corner and you see ... developments." On the ridge of a hill in front of us, hundreds of roofs come into view. "Look at the houses up there."

Drivers from those developments have worn these county roads down. Trucks serving farms and gravel pits nearby have accelerated the problem. Next, Ledbetter drives me out to Maxwell Road Southeast, just west of Tiger Mountain. "This road is in quick decline," he says. "If we don't catch it now with the resurfacing, it's gonna be even worse."

But the county doesn't have money for that kind of work these days. So instead, Ledbetter's workers shovel steaming piles of asphalt on the potholes. Many of the workers in this crew used to be in charge of crews of their own. After years of laying off less-experienced staff, only these veteran road workers remain.


A roads maintenance crew dumps asphalt on a bumpy section of Maxwell Road Southeast, west of Tiger Mountain. Such fixes don't last. This crew knows they'll be back soon.

As for the road, "it'll just become a patch quilt of potholes," says Ledbetter, shaking his head. "Is it the way we'd like to do it? No. Is it the way we're able to do it? Yes."



In Tony Ledbetter's office, a magnetic board indicates which workers are assigned to which jobs. The magnets on the bottom represent all the county roads maintenance workers who've been laid off.

Pothole repairs won't stop the road's downward spiral. With each passing winter, the rate of deterioration accelerates. Cracks left unpatched turn into bigger cracks. Unmowed shoulders prevent roads from draining rapidly. The water creeps under the road bed and breaks up the road when it freezes. As time passes, the cost of repairing those roads increases dramatically. Many roads are approaching the point of no return, where they can't be repaired, but must be completely rebuilt.

"It is dramatic," says Brenda Bauer, chief of King County's Roads Division. "We're thinking things no one is thinking about nationally. Like how to sensibly close down a system and how to talk with people about that."

Bauer says the county looked at letting some roads revert to gravel. But many are too hilly and too heavily used for that. The plan was rejected because it was too expensive.
Why is there so little money? The recession bears some of the blame, during which property values fell almost 40 percent. They've since risen again, but property taxes, which also fell, have not been able to recover, because state law only allows them to rise 1% a year. At that rate, it'll take the county at least 40 years to shake off the recession's grip.

"This is actually just one part of a bigger picture," says Todd Litman. He studies how transportation systems work for the Victoria Transport Institute in Canada. Litman says that while the recession may have contributed to the money shortage, there's also a long term explanation for King County's money problems: "Low-density development, commonly called sprawl, has very high infrastructure costs per resident."

Many developments rely partially on county roads for access, even when they've been annexed by nearby cities. For instance, The Lakes at Winterwood Estates subdivision and its tax base are part of Covington, but its access on Southeast Covington Sawyer Road is all King County.

Washington's Growth Management Act of 1990 attempted to curb sprawl. It began shifting the balance of power and money to cities. Cities annexed outlying areas that once paid taxes for county roads. That left fewer people in the county to pay for a relatively costly road infrastructure. And as important environmental and safety regulations on road crews have increased, the limited income that remains doesn't stretch as far.

While the Growth Management Act set the stage for King County to combat sprawl, it's also left the county short on funds to pay for roads and sheriffs.

On the right side of the graph, King County describes four different funding scenarios that would offer four different levels of service. Credit KUOW/Joshua McNichols Data from King County. (Data from King County)

Which leads to a big question: Do we need all these roads? "Well, we have houses out there," says County Council member Kathy Lambert. "So it'd be very difficult to say that I'm not going to have a road to my house. And we have freight that needs to get across the state."


King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert

Lambert represents northeast King County. She's pushing state legislators to add money to the state transportation package for county roads. She also wants legislators to approve a countywide transportation benefit district, so it could raise funds through a car tab increase, for example. That would allow cities to share the cost of maintaining county roads.

She leafs through graphs documenting the roads' decline.

"This is a crisis. The numbers show it's a crisis," she says. "It's never going to get cheaper. So if you want to save money, you spend it now before it gets even more expensive."