The growth in and around the city of Battle Ground has led to increased traffic, leading to intersections designed for previous demand but unable to efficiently control current usage.
Battle Ground Public Works have identified numerous intersections throughout the community, along with stretches of roadways and pedestrian infrastructure, that need to be improved in order to keep up with travel increases.
When a new development is submitted to city engineer Ryan Jeynes, he said developers submit a study that analyzes traffic impacts in the immediate vicinity and surrounding areas.
“So they provide that information, we look at it. … If there is an issue that is a new one, then we’re like, ‘OK, hold on, time out, pause.’ We need to figure out a solution to the issue, a mitigation for the issue,” Jeynes said. “And that’s what has happened with our eight intersections that are in concurrency failure. At some point, everything was good. Then it became [a failing grade].”
Intersections, such as Parkway Avenue and Onsdorff Boulevard, Onsdorff Boulevard and state Route 503, and six others, including state Route 503 and Eaton Boulevard, have been identified with a concurrency failure grade on an A through F scale. Intersection concurrency is defined by the city as capacity matching the demand. An intersection receiving an A grade has low vehicle flow and zero delays, while an intersection at a failing grade experiences traffic volumes exceeding capacity, long delays and stop-and-go traffic.
“The grades that we had in school, A through F, whereas in school, we didn’t have the E, we have the E with intersections,” Jeynes said. “Depending upon if it’s signalized or if it’s unsignalized, once it reaches a failing grade, at that point it’s considered to be in failure.”
Once an intersection is considered to be failing, Jeynes said that, depending on the situation, engineers will need to figure out the solution to fix it.
A key intersection considered to be failing is at the east end of the city’s Old Town district. Main Street and Grace Avenue has been a long concern for the residents of Battle Ground. Jeynes and Alisha Smith, Battle Ground communications manager, both said improvements to that intersection, which includes realigning Southeast Grace Avenue to directly connect to Northeast Grace Avenue, is likely to take place simultaneously with the Old Town Battle Ground sub-area plan.
In the 2022-27 Transportation Improvement Program Project Funding Analysis, the city identified intersection improvements planned for Northeast Onsdorff Boulevard and state Route 503, signal improvements at the intersection of Parkway Avenue and Main Street, intersection improvements at West 29th Avenue and West Main Street, among other roadway infrastructure projects.
Jeynes said none of the intersections are more important than the other, but being able to actively fix intersections all relies on the city’s budget.
“I’ve heard our public works director say on a number of occasions when he made presentations to the City Council is [that] if we had an endless pot of money where we can go out and fix all of these things and bring our overall pavement index up to 100 percent, we totally would,” Jeynes said. “But they have to balance out not only those factors of concurrency failures, grades, what have you, and mix it in with the money that we have.”