Agencies consider alternate route

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is promising logistical support for analyzing the benefits of an alternative route south of Sisters. The route would be designated a county road.

The possible local “bypass” or alternative route was broached at a Sisters City Council Workshop held with ODOT officials last month.

The workshop was intended to prepare council members for a decision concerning a Hood/Main Avenue couplet. City Manager Eileen Stein presented the image of a bypass drawn by council member Brad Boyd.

An inked-in line on a Forest Service map depicted a potential road connected to Highway 20 a half mile west of Tollgate. It followed the Brooks-Scanlon logging road south of Sisters to reconnect with Highway 20 near the intersection with Cloverdale Road.

Boyd floated the possibility of Deschutes County building an alternative route for motorists on Highway 20 who wish to avoid congestion in Sisters during the peak of the tourist season.

“A good long-term solution is the highway goes around Sisters and Sisters is a destination town,” said Boyd. “But we’re not talking about making a federal highway. In front of that solution is a road that goes around Sisters and the highway stays in Sisters and that there is a route that is built so that trucks can easily use it. They will and I know that.”

Boyd continued, “Here you’ve got this existing road where there was an easement granted to Brooks-Scanlon. Deschutes County records show that it was for one dollar that they granted right-of-way. So there’s a history of public, private and corporate use on it. So it’s pretty much no-brainer.”

When looking at Boyd’s drawing during the June 16 workshop, ODOT’s Central Oregon Senior Planner Peter Russell said that the route was “circuitous” and wouldn’t solve the congestion problem on the highway.

In a June 27 meeting with The Nugget, Russell said, “We’re always looking at different options and it was pretty clear that it (Boyd’s map) was going to be a county arterial.”

Joel McCarroll, ODOT Region Traffic Manager, said, “When you look at it on paper, what jumps into my head is that it would add a lot of miles to the trip. That route adds a number of miles so then I think, ‘Who is going to use it?’”

Deschutes County Roads Director Tom Blust thinks trucks might, in fact, use the route.

“If they don’t have to go through town, every truck that isn’t bound for Sisters will take the bypass,” he said. “If you build this road out there, it’s a perfect bypass for traffic going around Sisters. Then you will have to build it to a state highway standard, which is going to be more expensive.”

Blust felt that the cost of a bypass along the Brooks-Scanlon logging road would run somewhere near $17 million after easements had been purchased, environmental impact statements had been conducted, land use law exceptions obtained and engineering and construction completed.

The proposed couplet is estimated to cost approximately $5 million.

Russell explained ODOT’s potential role in a local bypass.

“As a county road it could offload our system and we don’t have quite the concern as a state route. That has a lot of flaws to it in my opinion, but building it as a state highway doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Russell. “Really, what the City of Sisters has to do is work with Deschutes County and we could provide what technical help was needed. Then it could go into the county TSP (Transportation System Plan) and then it can go into our construction plan,” Russell explained.

Blust said that the city’s transportation system is a “multi-jurisdictional” region that requires input from the greater Central Oregon area.