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Walking along 113th has been a hazardous activity for the neighbors

NW 113 Avenue sidewalk islands to be joined

The sidewalks on NW 113th Avenue will no longer end – and then begin – and then end again. By the end of the year walkers will have a continuous ribbon of sidewalks between NW Rainmont and Cornell roads. They won’t have to crisscross the steep, busy road to get to islands of sidewalk safety or walk alongside cars or drainage ditches as they make their way up or down the hill. The long-awaited project is due to begin in October, and according to Matt Meier of Washington County, be completed by the end of 2016.

The county will build 1,000 feet of 5-foot-wide paved pathway, separated from the travel lane behind the ditch, along the west side of 113th Avenue from Anderson Street to Rainmont Road. It will also install radar speed display signs to slow traffic. The posted speed is 35 mph, but cars often go much faster.

The $559,000 project falls outside of the typical sidewalk installation in unincorporated Washington County in that neither a development nor a major road improvement project spurred it. Funding for the sidewalks came from two pots: Minor Betterments and the Urban Road Maintenance District (URMD). Minor Betterments is road money that comes from gas taxes and vehicle registrations. Its aim is make small-scale improvements that are not part of basic maintenance, but not large enough to be capital improvements. The section of 113th from Valros Lane to NW Damascus Street is funded by Minor Betterments.

Where the sidewalk ends...

The URMD is funded by property taxes at a rate of about 25 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. The section from Anderson to Valros and Damascus to Melody Lane (excluding a sidewalk section built by the developer of a subdivision off Melody Lane) is funded by the URMD.

For more information on sidewalks in unincorporated Washington County visit this site.

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