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Cross-base – or Star-Crossed?

The Department of Transportation (DOT) recently awarded a contract to Ceccanti, Inc. to build the first segment of State Road 704, known as the Cross-Base Highway. This first step widens Spanaway Loop Road (SLR) with two travel lanes and a separated median for .68 of a mile, from Pacific Avenue west to the first 90-degree corner on Spanaway Loop. The improvement also creates dual south-turn lanes at SLR’s intersection with Pacific Avenue. Work begins July 2008, to be completed by July 2009.

Local residents are pleased with the news but are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“A Pierce County road engineer first told me about the Cross-base highway proposal in 1968,” said Jean Sensel, co-founder of a neighborhood traffic safety association in the mid-'90's. “I read the first consultant's study for the proposed alignment in the early 1980’s.” But the cross-base was stalled for years by Department of Defense concerns that the proposed road could interfere with military missions, by lack of local funding, and by the state legislature’s lack of support. “Until recently, the state saw the cross-base highway as a local road, not recognizing its regional and state-wide economic significance,” said Sensel.

The Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce took a leadership role in promoting the Cross-base Highway in 1986. Then events brought Parkland, Spanaway, and Fredrickson community and legislative leaders to lend their support: Rapid south county growth created near-gridlock on SR-7 (Pacific Avenue); resulting overflow traffic impacted the safety of adjacent residential areas; new revenue-and job-producing industrial zones in Fredrickson and in Spanaway south of the Roy Y couldn’t develop without efficient access to I-5; an accidental discharge of tear gas from Fort Lewis drifted over Spanaway and made clear that the area has no efficient evacuation route in the event of a natural or military disaster.

“Safety became a chief concern for me and my neighbors as commuter traffic started cutting through side streets to bypass congestion on the main roads,” said Sensel. "Speeding vehicles caused injury accidents every week on our street alone. I’m not talking a few cars. By 2001 we had over 17,000 vehicles per day burning past our kids walking to and waiting at bus stops, including a daily average of over 700 large rigs like gasoline tankers, logging trucks, and car-haulers. Children couldn't cross the street to play with their friends, or even play in their front yards. We regularly had cars swerve into our yards trying to beat traffic, and right into the house in several cases. Sixty square blocks in my neighborhood were affected, and this story was repeated all along the SR-7 corridor."

But even once the military and county, state, and federal highway officials came on board with the SR704 project, environmental activists caused years of delay by filing a series of lawsuits against the county and the state. A coalition of environmental groups even sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency after the EPA approved the proposed mitigation measures to protect marshland and wildlife along the corridor. Last year lawsuit threats by environmentalists caused the Regional Transportation Investment District to drop the Cross-base Highway from its Puget Sound region road/ferry/rapid transit funding proposal. "The measure then failed to pass," said Sensel, "and I repeatedly heard comments like 'if they won't build our road, too, they don't get our tax dollars' and 'we're tired of our road dollars going to King County.'"

Shortly after the RTID measure failed, the Audubon Society vowed in its newsletter to members to sue out of existence any further attempt to build the Cross-Base Highway. "Reducing air pollution with efficient traffic flow, cutting crippling traffic accidents, and providing safe neighborhoods for our children weighed against displacing some Gerry Oak trees and common squirrels?” asked Sensel. “It can't be a case of 'don't build it or they will come'. South County development and the resulting commuter traffic are already here. Objections to this road just don’t make sense.”

Will the Cross-Base Highway become a reality, or remain a good but thwarted idea?
Visit the Washington Dept. of Transportation website for project details.