Sick of bone-jarring drives, flat tires and vehicle alignment problems, residents along the old Evergreen Highway corridor told the Vancouver City Council on Monday they wanted the 100-year-old road properly fixed.
They disputed the notion that in past years, residents had said they didn’t want they road repaired, fearing it would turn into a speedway.
“I have never heard a resident express that they want to keep the road as it is — unsafe and difficult to drive,” Stephen Line said after Monday’s council workshop. “No one’s using stagecoaches anymore on that road.”
But totally rebuilding the 6.7-mile-long highway from Chelsea Avenue to the city limits at 192nd Avenue appears to be out of the question financially. City staff estimate a new asphalt road built to last 50 years would cost $27 million to $40 million.
“It’s unlikely that we’ll be in a position to do a complete reconstruction of that roadway in the foreseeable future,” City Manager Eric Holmes said.
And residents realize that’s true. But they’re angry that their property taxes haven’t been going toward improvements to the two-lane road they drive daily.
“It’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime,” Line said. “Everything’s going to be a patchwork, and we’ll be facing this crisis (again) in five years.”
At Monday’s workshop attended by about 40 residents, city staff presented an overview of the Evergreen Highway corridor management plan that’s in the works to provide guidance, direction and documentation for future decisions regarding the road, which the city annexed from Clark County in 1997. Built in 1920, the road is lined with upscale homes with sweeping views of the Columbia River below.
When the county designated Evergreen Highway a scenic route in 1978 and proposed widening it and adding sidewalks, two-thirds of residents polled through a public meeting and opinion survey said no. In 2000, the city put down a thin asphalt veneer over the original concrete panels. Now the asphalt is popping up and “unraveling,” senior city planner Jennifer Campos said Monday.
Using the Pavement Condition Index of 1 to 100, much of Evergreen Highway is technically rated as a “failed” street, which is any arterial that scores less than 40. From Chelsea to Southeast 164th Avenue, the highway rates an average score of 34. From Southeast 164th Avenue to city limits, it scores an average of 46. In total, 8 lane miles of Evergreen Highway are considered failed, city staff said.
Last fall, the city began milling off the asphalt to reveal the concrete beneath. It’s smoothed out the roadway — somewhat — but additional treatments are needed, Campos said. In 2014, the city tested a treatment called an “enhanced cape seal,” which consists of three layers: a microsurface slurry covered with an asphalt rubber chip seal covered with a microsurface slurry. It’s just a Band-Aid measure, and it has a lifespan of just five to seven years.
But at $11 to $14 per square yard, the price is right. While the cape seal looks good, it’s not as smooth as a thick asphalt overlay. And that is what residents want if they can’t have a complete rebuild. Asphalt would cost $32 to $37 per square yard and last eight to 12 years.
“Our greatest frustration with this is … we want one surface. But since we’ve been annexed 18 years ago, we don’t understand why there’s a hesitation to put a surface on the roadway that is any different than the rest of the city of Vancouver enjoys,” said Serena Lucey, Columbia River Neighborhood Association co-chair.
City construction manager Dan Swensen told the council, “The cost problem for us here is the size of the project.”
Last year, the city council adopted a street funding package that will generate $7 million a year for street maintenance, repairs, replacement and capital projects. The new funding stream is coming from vehicle tab fees, a business license surcharge hike and a utility tax increase.
Of that, about $3.5 million will be available citywide for capital projects starting in 2019. And out of that amount, about $500,000 will be earmarked for street reconstruction, Campos said. Given the other needs for reconstruction citywide, that’s not much, she noted.
And so, the Evergreen Highway corridor plan will look at phasing reconstruction and doing a combination of treatments in other areas, Campos said.
After the council approves the corridor management plan, which is expected to happen in July or August, the city’s next step is to develop a detailed pavement rehabilitation plan for the corridor.
Monday, Columbia River Neighborhood Association co-chair Roger Parsons told the council the reconstruction “is never going to happen.”
“We think asphalt is the way to go,” he said. “The interim basis is what we’re going to live with, and that’s what we want on a permanent basis.”
