PORT TOWNSEND — The city engineer warned City Council members Monday night that the main artery into the city — Sims Way — is fast reaching its vehicle-handling capacity.
“If you’re a transportation engineer, Sims Way will soon reach the amount of capacity it can handle for cars,” said Dave Peterson, introducing Scott Sawyer, a consultant with the Northwest civil engineering firm of W&H Pacific.
Traffic circles — also called roundabouts — or traditional traffic signals can only temporarily fix Sims Way traffic problems, the consultant firm concludes.
Finding alternative routes off and around Sims appears to be the long-term answer.
“Whether it’s a signal or whether it’s a roundabout, Sims is going to reach its capacity in about 10 years,” Sawyer said.
He added that the city needed to design some additional routes out of Port Townsend to avoid traffic delays.
So concludes W&H Pacific, hired by the city to launch conceptual design traffic design work on Sims, between Howard and McPherson streets.
Public outreach
W&H Pacific’s traffic analyses and modeling studies were done in connection with a series of city’s public outreach efforts.
Council members voiced concerns that roundabouts would not handle large trucks or firefighting vehicles.
While the traffic engineers said roundabouts were designed to allow commercial truck passage, Port Townsend Fire Chief Mike Mingee raised concerns that they would slow emergency vehicles.
“We’re in the service that seconds count,” Mingee told the council, urging them to keep him and Port Townsend Police Chief Conner Daily in the traffic design loop.
“The most important thing is before you design this, you have got to get with fire services up front.”