By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats City Council voted 4-1 Wednesday to seek a state grant to do a comprehensive traffic study after a discussion and debate about what to do about Ocean View Drive.
The council voted in May to designate two portions of the street for one-way traffic – northbound from West Second to Seventh street and eastbound from Yachats State Park to Pontiac Street – after Lincoln County turns the road over to city ownership. The effect of that is to make Second Street the entrance to the state park, only recently drawing objections from many residents along it.
Because the county has had to delay paving 2,000 feet of Ocean View Drive until the fall, Mayor John Moore and some council members are having second thoughts about its one-way traffic decision and the impact that change will have on other city streets.
But the traffic study – if the city gets a state grant to do it – won’t be done for two years.
Council members Wednesday fretted over Ocean View Drive details and what the traffic study might really do after hearing comments from county public works director Roy Kinion and city engineer Steven Ward.
Council members got into details about striping the newly paved street, whether stripes could be changed if it switches its vote on one-way traffic, or even if there should be any stripes at all until a traffic study is done.
Kinion recommended some kind of stripe to help keep traffic separated and gave the council until Sept. 1 to tell him what it wanted to do. Paving would proceed later that month, he said, after the county goes through a bidding process.
In the end, Kinion said, from Second to Seventh streets there is only enough room for a 12-foot-wide traffic lane and an 8-foot pedestrian/bike lane.
Steven Ward, the city’s contract engineer from Westech Engineering of Salem, encouraged the council to seek a state grant to study all the city’s transportation issues even though it would it couldn’t apply until next June and take another year to complete.
“What that means is that we leave it the way it is until the traffic study is done, Ward said. “Ultimately, however, I’m sure it will be one-way.”
City Manager Shannon Beaucaire, while seeming to support the study, said there were dangers. It’s a long, competitive process, she said, and if the city application isn’t approved it delays everything for another year. “There may also be things we don’t like in it,” Beaucaire said.
Ward said a traffic study could also be used to help convince the Oregon Department of Transportation to make changes to several U.S. Highway 101 intersections – especially the one at West Second Street which most Yachats residents consider troublesome and dangerous.
“ODOT will definitely have a say and will protect their transportation plan,” Ward said. “They have been OK to work with … but they will protect their investment.
“We all know the intersections are a problem … the question is whether they’ll (ODOT) put money into fixing it.”
Councilors Jim Tooke and James Kerti said no matter what and when the council made a decision on Ocean View Drive, there would be complaints.
“There’s going to be a downside to everything we do,” Tooke said.
Councilor Leslie Vaaler was the only councilor objecting to the traffic study, warning the council “to think carefully about involving ODOT.”
“I’m rather aghast that we’re considering a transportation study at this point,” she said, referencing the two years it will take to get it done and more delays in solving Ocean View Drive’s problems. “I think we’re being irresponsible to have two-way traffic on that road.”