West Haven neighborhood opposes road classification
by Virginia Bruce
 Neighbors in the West Haven area of Cedar Mill have been concerned about a County ordinance that changes the classification of a proposed extension of 95th Street from Barnes Road to NW Taylor Street (see map). The road is currently shown on County Transportation Plan maps as a Special Area Neighborhood Route and a Special Area Local Street. A section of Ordinance 718 changes that designation to a Special Area Collector.
This is considered a “Special Area (S.A.)” because of its proximity to the Sunset Transit Center. There are several differences between a Neighborhood Route and a Collector. Neighborhood Route designs allow for on-street parking and two lanes that can be 11 or 12 feet wide. For Collectors, the travel lanes are 12 feet wide and require dedicated bike lanes. Neighborhood Routes can include “traffic-calming” features such as medians, narrower lanes, and speed bumps. These features are not allowed on Collectors.
West Haven is the neighborhood that sits between Cornell Road and the St. Vincent’s Medical Center/Peterkort medical building complex along Barnes Road. Leahy Road runs through it between Cornell and Barnes. It includes a mix of older homes from the 30s and 40s and subdivisions that were built starting in the 60’s and continuing to this day. It also includes the Trillium Hollow Cohousing Community.
Residents of CPO 1 are aware that there is a lack of north/south connector roads in our community. This north/south road connection is intended to serve the residents of the West Haven neighborhood by improving connections with Barnes Road, Hwy 217 and the Sunset Transit Center.
A couple of years ago, Taylor Street was connected to Valeria View in the recently-built subdivision to the west, creating a through street between Leahy and Valeria View. As a result of this connection, following neighborhood complaints, Taylor has just recently qualified for the County’s Neighborhood Streets traffic calming program based on traffic volume and speed.
The County Planning Commission passed Ordinance 718 on September 2. Several of the 16 neighborhood residents who were notified of the meeting attended and testified. Following that, about 50 neighbors met on September 13 to discuss their options and make plans. Their ranks have since grown to include about 150 households.
They are concerned about several perceived issues—that the Collector designation will prevent traffic-calming measures to slow downhill traffic coming from Barnes (there is a very steep slope where the route leaves the developed section of St. Vincent’s); that it will bring large volumes of traffic onto their narrow streets as “cut-through traffic;” that the resulting traffic will make it more dangerous for children to walk to nearby schools (Catlin Gabel and West Tualatin View). More information about their concerns and plans is on a website (groups.yahoo.com/group/westhaven/)
The Board of County Commissioners heard Ordinance 718 on October 6. As a result of public comment, County staff amended its previous recommendation from simply passing the ordinance “as-is” to “engrossing” (changing) the ordinance to designate only the portion of 95th between Barnes and West Haven Drive as a S.A. Collector and leaving the rest of it as a Neighborhood Route.
 Some of the neighbors still feel that the Collector designation should end at the top of the hill, within the St. Vincent’s property. As Erik Mace, one of the leaders of the neighborhood group, says, “Stopping at Westhaven leaves the Springcrest/Brookside folks and four neighbors along 95th (south of Westhaven) with no calming options. If planning staff is okay with moving it down to Westhaven, why are they not willing to go to St. V’s property line or further south?”
Commissioner Strader met with neighbors before the Oct. 6 meeting, and as a result of hearing their concerns, she recommended further limiting the change to the north St. Vincent's property line, which is the version that passed.
Questions have been asked about why there is a need at this time to change the classification if any road-building is off in the future. One answer lies in a recent Development Application submitted by St. Vincent’s, proposing to add several facilities to their campus and change some of their access points on Barnes Road (see small map). In the Conditions for Approval, the County calls for the developer to either build or pay for the segment of 95th within their property. The amount they’d need to pay for a Collector would likely be higher.
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| An informal trail leads up this steep slope from 95th & Springcrest through a wooded area |
Another factor is associated with a 55-lot development that has been approved on the southeast corner of West Haven and 95th (the treeless area on the map). During the September 2 Planning Commission meeting, Kirsten Van Loo, who represents the developer, testified that the development (currently stalled because of the poor economy) is conditioned to do some “nominal street improvements only to its specific frontage” but that “an important reason for changing the designation of 95th from a neighborhood route to a collector route is to expand funding options for building the street” that would lead to the development.
CPO 1 (cpo1friends.org), which includes the West Haven neighborhood, didn’t meet during August, and didn’t discuss the proposed ordinance at its September meeting. There was a lengthy and educational discussion at their Oct. 6 evening meeting. Many of those at the CPO meeting had been at the Commissioners meeting that morning.
The CPO 1 Connecting Neighborhoods Subcommittee met on September 16 and generally supported the “spirit of the ordinance” since it would add a neighborhood connection and includes bike lanes. But at that time the group didn’t realize that traffic calming measures were not allowed on Collectors. In a letter published in the CPO 1 October newsletter, they also criticized “piecemeal” transportation planning and recommended that the connection not be built until 95th is extended all the way through to Taylor. Currently there are two segments of the road that are merely trails through County right-of-way.
This situation is tied into several larger issues, including the shift to a transportation system that connects neighborhoods rather than the isolated neighborhoods fashionable when auto travel was king. Getting people easily to the Sunset Transit Center is desirable—many West Haven neighbors already use the unimproved trail that follows the general road alignment to do so.
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