King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert says bridge, road problems on ‘collision course’
Feb 21, 2017, 12:01 PM | Updated: 4:39 pm
SR 520. (WSDOT flickr)
(WSDOT flickr)
Based on the current budgetary limitations, in less than 25 years, 19 percent of King County’s bridges will need to be either closed or greatly altered, according to King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert. Same is true for 72 miles of county road.
It’s projections like these that had Lambert telling KTTH’s Todd Herman that King County’s infrastructure is “absolutely” on a concerning path while defending the county’s priorities.
“We have 181 bridges in King County and we believe that by the year 2040, that 35 of those bridges will either have to be closed or change their weight-bearing capacity or their speed limits,” Lambert said. “We believe by that same year that 72 miles of roads in King County will also either be closed or have gone to gravel or have their speed limit changed. Because we know how long an asset lasts and we know how much money we have, and they are completely on a collision course.”
Related: Why the 520 Bridge was misunderstood as ‘structurally deficient’
As a member of the non-partisan King County Council, Lambert represents the largest district, District 3, which includes North Bend, Snoqualmie, Issaquah, Sammamish, and Redmond, among others. She explained that the county has about $93 million annually to use toward 1,500 miles of road. Put in perspective, that stretch could go from Vancouver, B.C. to Tijuana. It’s a $40 billion asset, she said.
Lambert said when the county hired an outside organization to study their calculations, they found that, because of inflation and other costs, the county was actually short about another $350 million a year in covering the needed bills.
“So we need $450 million, we get around $90 million,” she said. “So that gap is so huge there’s no way you can do anything to close that gap.”
Kathy Lambert on priorities
Herman challenged her on the county’s funding priorities, pointing to County Executive Dow Constantine recent allocation of $750,000 toward helping immigrants become U.S. citizens. Lambert said the council works to “pinch every penny,” pointing to massive layoffs from years before. She said there are barriers in the law keeping the county from spending between accounts and explained that Constantine’s allocation comes from the general fund, which legally can’t be used on infrastructure.
“It would be like saying on my block I have found some money in my neighbor’s checkbook,” she explained. “That is a different checkbook and obviously he has access to that checkbook but this is a transportation account and the only monies that come into this account that we are able to spend are [from] gas tax and then property taxes only on the people who live in the unincorporated area. And that’s the problem right there.”
Lambert said the roads account doesn’t have enough money coming into it because of a formula set by the state. She said the county has gone to the state to change that formula three times since 1993, including last year when a council-created bridges and roads task force recommended that it needed a countywide funding source. She said the task force found one obvious low-hanging fruit: 60 roads that account for 24 total miles that impact 21 cities. These orphan roads are completely surrounded by a city. The council went to Olympia to try and get a bill that would say if a city surrounds a single road piece that it is the city’s charge.
The idea didn’t go well.
“It was one of the least pleasant conversations that I’ve seen in the Legislature for a while,” she said.
“It’s been very frustrating for all of us to try to say, ‘How do we do this in such a way that we do not lose our $40 billion assets?'”
