SEQUIM — After nearly 10 years of struggle over the “missing mile” in the Olympic Discovery Trail, the Sequim City Council voted 5-1 Monday night to connect the Peninsula-crossing path along East Spruce Street, a peaceful residential lane alongside Carrie Blake Park.
Member Erik Erichsen, often the dissenter in council decisions, decried the Spruce Street segment of trail, calling it too expensive.
“We don’t need a Cadillac missing link,” he said. “We need to get from point A to point B,” and a mere white stripe painted on the road would do fine.
Instead, a 10-foot-wide sidewalk for pedestrians, cyclists and wheelchair users can now be built along Spruce, provided Sequim wins enough grant money for construction.
The Discovery Trail’s now-approved route will stretch from the park’s edge up Spruce, then north one block on Sunnyside Avenue, then a block more on Fir to Sequim Avenue.
City planners hope to land grants for this trail section, to the tune of $345,000.
That’s the price on building the Spruce route, City Engineer Bill Bullock told the council.
The estimated cost was the lowest of all the routes considered by the Sequim Citizens Park Advisory Board, which last year spent months studying possibilities.
A trail segment up Fir Street, for example, would have cost an estimated $430,000.
Before the council voted, member Susan Lorenzen asked Peninsula Trails Coalition spokesman Chuck Preble to explain why the Spruce link ought not be just a white stripe delineating a bicycle lane.
“You need to face the fact that eventually you have to meet [state and federal] standards . . . the only way you could have a safe route that would accommodate both bicyclists and walkers, and ADA of course,” Preble said, would be to “go to the 10-foot sidewalk.”
He was referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires wheelchair-accessible surfaces.
“You have to do that,” he added, “when you look at the big picture.”
The Discovery Trail will some day be 125 miles long, spanning the North Olympic Peninsula from the Port Townsend Boat Haven all the way to the Pacific Ocean at LaPush.
Just 34 miles of it are complete today, Preble said. But with 30 more miles under construction and city and county planners seeking grant money, he believes that one day, cyclists will be able to pedal from bay to sea on a smooth, uninterrupted path.
Council member Walt Schubert recalled aloud the debates over how to connect the trail. He’s called the Sequim gap an embarrassment.
“This went through several councils,” he said. “I’m proud to get to this point . . . I think if we’re going to do it, we need to do it right,” not “halfway,” which is what Schubert thinks a white stripe would be.
Preble emphasized that state and federal money is available for trail construction, so the city of Sequim won’t be footing the whole bill.
“There’s funding being put into the trail systems,” he said. “We need to strike while the iron is hot.”
Already $30 million has been spent on other legs of the Discovery Trail, and the bulk has come from government grants, Preble said.
Preble seized the opportunity to tell the Sequim council of the Discovery Trail’s significance.
“It’s the largest new tourist-drawing facility that’s being built in the North Olympic Peninsula, so it means a lot,” he said, to the economy as well as to the locals who love it.
Earlier this month Sequim parks coordinator Jeff Edwards said that once the council approve a Discovery Trail route, he and the Planning Department will start seeking grants so construction can start in early 2010.
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
