Mapping aims to improve safety

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Apr 08, 20150

The preliminary engineering phase is underway for a county road safety plan aiming to reduce accidents on rural, two-lane highways.

Whitman County Public Works Department is in negotiations with Erlandsen, Incorporated, a surveying firm from Wenatchee, to perform laser mapping. The work will use a vehicle-mounted radar system which charts terrain – effectively inventorying all obstacles, slopes, etc., alongside county two-lane roads.

The summer work will be funded by a $660,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration.

The data Erlandsen collects will be used to determine construction work to be performed next year.

Public Works was awarded the grant in January.

The project’s focus is to look at the risk factors in the same type of locations in which an accident or accidents have occurred. Resulting improvements could range from added signs on curves, removal of trees, addition of guardrails and adjusting the slope of a road’s edge so an errant car is less likely to roll.

Last summer, Public Works Director Mark Storey and Assistant County Engineer Dean Cornelison wrote a proposal for WSDOT seeking the funding, which comes from the 2012 federal highways act called “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century.”

WSDOT’s Local Programs division sought applicants from counties with many rural roads.

Whitman County previously received a $650,000 grant in 2010 for road safety improvements. The money resulted in several projects, including the addition of a turn lane at Pullman Airport Road, solar-powered flashing stop signs in two places on Wawawai Road - where more than one accident had occurred - added guardrails and tree removal along the white edgelines on eight different county roads.

Accident rates have fallen statewide and in the county in recent years. On two-lane county roads in Washington in 2008, there were 175 fatalities. In 2012, there were 120.

For Whitman County in 2008 there were two fatal accidents with four serious injuries, while in 2012 there was one fatal accident with three serious injuries.