Inch for inch, the stretch of Highway 20 in Oak Harbor between Beeksma Drive and Swantown Avenue is one of the most accident-prone segments of road on Whidbey Island.

Anyone who’s driven the section at about 5 p.m. also knows it’s the most congested.

Officials from the city and state — the latter of which is ultimately responsible for the highway — have been discussing the problem for at least a decade, but still a fix remains elusive.

While everyone seems to agree that highway widening is in order, the task is complicated by funding problems, the state’s prioritization method for road construction, a state law that only applies to islands with highways, and of course, politics.

Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano, doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for city officials who complain that the state needs to fix the highway. She said the city brought about the problem by allowing so much development, particularly the Wal-Mart, in the immediate area.

“It’s just an awful mess. Those of us who were watching knew this would happen,” she said of the effect from the Wal-Mart and Albertsons development. “The city can’t create a problem and then expect the state to come in and fix it.”

Haugen, chair of the senate’s transportation committee, said the problem will probably only be alleviated when the city takes a leadership role and offers to fund a major portion of the estimated $13 million project.

City Engineer Eric Johnston, however, said it’s wrong to point the finger at development.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say any specific development is the cause of a problem on the highway,” he said.

Johnston points out that traffic jams in the area coincide with hours of employment, not with shopping hours.

City elected leaders have consistently insisted that the highway is the state’s responsibility; some council members were even hesitant to put the project on the city’s project priority list. Moreover, they say the city simply doesn’t have the money to take on a project of that magnitude.

Haugen is meeting with Oak Harbor officials in the next couple of weeks to discuss the highway.

There may be a glimmer of hope in sight. Staff from the city and the Department of Transportation have been discussing the possibility of an interim, less-expensive project using a $1 million grant from the Regional Transportation Planning Organization.

“We wanted to see if there was something we can do right away that would help,” said Todd Carlson, planning and operations manager for the Department of Transportation.

Eliminate Scenic Heights turn?

City and state staff came up with about seven options for improving the section of road. One proposal is to eliminate the left turn lane to Scenic Heights Street and turn it into an extra southbound lane. This would eliminate left turns both into and out of Scenic Heights, which means the intersections at Swantown and Erie would have to be expanded to allow for U-turns for drivers who need to get onto Scenic Heights.

Johnston said he’s not convinced the option of restricting access is viable or if the $1 million grant would cover the costs. City and state staff are meeting later this month to discuss the possibilities.

Carlson said the state doesn’t have any money to contribute to other options, such as the idea of moving the mobile homes in the area off the highway, buying the land and adding another lane. There’s simply not enough money to do this larger project, barring sizable grant funding.

But when it comes to state road work, plenty of residents have questioned why the Department of Transportation has done other large construction projects on the highway on North Whidbey — but not the Swantown to Erie section that vexes folks the most.

Safety first

for priorities

Dave Chesson, DOT spokesman, said it’s simply a matter of how the department sets priorities. The department has some control over money for safety projects, but little for work to alleviate congestion. Among safety projects, the top priority projects are those in areas where they are more high-speed, serious accidents, not the low-speed collisions that occur in areas within cities.

Carlson said the state uses a benefit-cost process to decide which projects to do. They consider the cost of a project and the benefit, which is reducing accidents. The potential of reducing accidents with serious injuries — and especially fatalities — is worth more than reducing just sheer numbers of accidents, like the fender benders that occur in the congested section.

If the city did step forward with money, it could change the formula.

“We make decisions on what is the biggest bang for the buck,” Carlson said. “If Oak Harbor came in and offered to pay half, it would change the cost-benefit analysis.”

Carlson said he agrees “somewhat” with Sen. Haugen that development allowed in Oak Harbor made the problems on the highway worse, but he pointed out that it’s still a state highway that carries traffic regionally.

On a positive note, Carlson pointed out that the city’s extension of Barrington Drive should help with traffic on the highway by creating an alternate route for people who live in the southwest area of the city.

If the section of the highway does get worse, it could have consequences beyond frustrated drivers.

Road rage

could grow

Oak Harbor Police Chief Steve Almon said there will likely be continued accidents and the possibility of road rage incidents. He said the gridlock doesn’t currently have much of an impact on the ability of emergency vehicles to get through, since police cars and ambulances can weave through the traffic effectively. But he said that practice is just risky for both the police and the public.

The bottom line, Almon said, is that he would like to see the road improved.

“The risk factor for serious injuries is not that great,” he admitted. “Then again, if you are bumper-to-bumper on I-5, you’re not going to have any serious accidents.”

Then there’s a question of development and concurrency. Under a state concurrency law, development on the island is tied to concurrent transportation improvements.

In fact, Carlson suggests that the concurrency law only really would affect Oak Harbor, as a city on an island with a state highway running through it. It could technically affect Coupeville or Clinton, but he doubts any project in those communities could ever have a big enough impact on the highway.

If the traffic gets bad enough, Haugen said the city may have one choice: “Say no to development.”