By Jeff Chew
Peninsula Daily News
BLYN — The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe hopes to start asphalt resurfacing and pedestrian safety improvements on the stretch of Old Blyn Highway fronting the tribal center this summer.
The tribe wants to find ways to slow speeding vehicles for crossing pedestrians, said tribal Chief Operating Officer Annette Nesse.
“Traffic calming — that’s the direction we’re taking on Old Blyn Highway,” said Nesse said.
The Clallam County Road Department will have the final say on what traffic improvements are made.
Nesse said tribal discussion has focused on such possibilities as landscaping that acts to slow traffic, more visible crosswalks, better lighting, even rumble strips and speed tables, which are flatter, wider speed bumps.
“We’re going to keep it as simple as we can,” Nesse said, adding the emphasis would be on more visible crosswalks and more lighting, including motion-activated pedestrian crossing lights.
The tribe has about $30,000 budgeted for the resurfacing and safety improvements, she said, through Clallam County Road Department.
Also under study is the realignment of the Chicken Coop Road and Zaccardo Road intersections with U.S. Highway 101 and leading to the tribal center’s other campus across 101 from the Old Blyn Highway campus, Nesse said.
The tribe has temporarily put on hold plans to redirect traffic coming in from East Sequim Bay Road around the tribal center, she said, to further study options with the state Department of Transportation.
“We’re backing away from the Highway 101 piece of that and focusing on the Chicken Coop-Zaccardo intersection,” Nesse said, calling the existing alignment of the roads with the highway “awkward” for motorists.
The idea is to combine the two roads into one intersection, a project that is funded and being designed.
The tribe in 2010 proposed traffic changes around Highway 101, including creation of a median on the highway that would block left turns on and off the highway in places and create U-turns lanes, such as those on Highway 101 east of Deer Park Road.
But residents primarily on East Sequim Bay Road balked at the changes intended to reroute traffic flow around the tribal center, saying it would require them to drive east on 101 from a realigned East Sequim Bay Road and make a U-turn to head back toward Blyn and Sequim.
That 101 proposal would allow only right turns on and off the highway, using medians.
Left-turn acceleration and deceleration also were proposed.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.