News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
After years of wrangling, the City of Sisters is still trying to figure out how to smoothly move heavy volumes of traffic through town without destroying the ambiance of the downtown area.
The Sisters City Council took in an Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) presentation on Thursday evening, February 23, of the agency’s analysis of a “couplet” configuration that would leave all of Sisters’ streets going two ways.
A committee had earlier settled on a Hood Avenue-Main Avenue one-way couplet, but new councilors and some concern from citizens caused the city to back off that idea and ask ODOT if the two-way couplet would do any good.
ODOT’s answer on Thursday was not a definitive yes or no. Like most transportation issues in Sisters, the solution is not a complete one, even in the short term.
According to City Manager Eileen Stein, ODOT’s analysis indicates problems with the intersection of Hood and Cascade avenues whether the couplet is a two-way configuration or a traditional one-way couplet. Traffic bottles up and runs into a failing intersection at Cascade Avenue and Locust Street.
“No matter what you do, that Locust intersection is where it fails,” said Councilor Brad Boyd.
Putting in a signal at that intersection doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, ODOT notes that the signal “exceeds” ODOT’s volume-to-capacity standard in 2025.
Also, long eastbound queues develop at the intersection (with a signal) even with today’s volumes.
The extension of Main Avenue to link up with Highway 20 offers better prospects, but that intersection, too, “eventually... will have lengthy queues and marginal volume-to-capacity ratio,” according to ODOT.
The analysis indicates that “by 2015, the traffic volume on Cascade will grow to the point where it causes north-south traffic to back up to Hood and Main.”
That’s not a long ways off from 2006, particularly since Stein believes the city is five years away from implementing a solution.
Councilor Lon Kellstrom says the analysis convinced him that a split couplet — one-way or two-way — won’t work.
“I just don’t see how that’s going to happen,” he said.
The councilor said he is reluctantly supportive of a two-way “couplet” using Cascade and Main. Such a couplet would require linking Main Avenue to the highway at the west end of town, going through the current Sisters Ranger District site. It would also likely require a radius sweep along Locust Street to Main Avenue at the east end.
According to Eileen Stein, depending on how much work was done at the Cascade Avenue and Locust Street intersection, the price tag would be about $5 million. The cost would be borne by some combination of the city, ODOT and developers.
Boyd wants to see the city focus on moving traffic around Sisters.
“The long-term solution is to get an alternate route around town,” he said.
Boyd is particular about calling it an alternate route rather than a bypass. An alternate route would give through travelers an option of going around, where a bypass would force them to do so, he says. It could take the burden off Cascade Avenue on busy summer days yet still allow tourists to stop if they wanted to.
He said the city was to begin exploring such possibilities with Deschutes County and ODOT this week.
Kellstrom considers any kind of bypass “pie in the sky” based on statewide needs and available funds.
For her part, Stein cautions that “a bypass... is not an immediate fix.”
She said that, given “the political and environmental issues that would have to be worked out, I think it would take years to solve.”
So, for the near-term, the city is looking at creating some street improvements on Main Avenue in preparation for what would be, for now, a two-way couplet on Main and Cascade avenues. Whether a signal would be part of the equation remains up in the air.
So does cost and who will pay. Stein said that the city needs to come up with some concrete plans soon, because such work could be funded through new transportation systems development charges.
That has the potential to significantly impact SDCs.
Getting developers to share part of the burden is important, because ODOT is only going to fund a proportionate share of any project — proportionate to the amount of burden it relieves on the highway. The city will carry the rest of the load.
That fact is paramount on Lon Kellstrom’s mind.
“I’m just looking at how we can get the most lanes westbound and eastbound as possible without breaking the bank,” he said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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