When a quiet neighborhood street was expanded to connect with one of Bellingham’s major commercial routes, the small residential area found itself overrun with oversized semi-trucks that could not fit on its narrow streets. Community members and city council members banded together to return the neighborhood to its former safety while keeping the new intersection open.
West Street of Columbia Neighborhood was expanded to connect with Squalicum Parkway, changing it from a residential road to a heavily trafficked area. This traffic includes semi trucks attempting to drive through to Bellingham’s cold storage facilities, though the community’s narrow streets could not accommodate them.
“A group of neighbors had to lift another neighbors car once while they were out of town,” said Flip Breskin, who coordinates communication throughout Columbia’s residents through emails, newsletters, and online postings . “[The car] would have been crushed by a semi truck that had gotten stuck if they had not.”
Columbia residents petitioned to close the expansion or changing it to a one-way street to return traffic to normal. By working closely with Council-members Jack Weiss and Gene Knutson, who is also an employee of Bellingham Cold Storage Company, residents were able to compromise on keeping the road as long as it was changed to
discourage truck drivers and high speeds.
Breskin says there were complaints that police would not properly ticket speeders in the area and often sided with truck drivers when a conflict developed. The residents realized the actual structure of West Street needed to change in order to return the street to the low traffic residential area it once was.
Through the effort of the community and council members the roads were made as slender as city code allows, three signs were placed in the area prohibiting trucks over 28,000 gross vehicle weight who were not delivering locally, a median and roundabout were added to West Street, and two reflector poles were placed at the ends of the bike trail over Squalicum Creek.
“The bike trail markers have been knocked down multiple times by confused semi truck drivers,” Breskin said. “Each time a bike pole has to be replaced it costs the city of Bellingham roughly a $1,000.”
Claire Evans lives with her husband and kids two houses from the corner of the new roundabout.
“The roundabout has really reduced the speeding,” Evans said. “We’re very happy with it.”
The roundabout fauna has become a community effort headed by Susan Gardner. All the plants featured in the roundabout a local to the Pacific Northwest. Work parties are scheduled on Saturday’s throughout the year to maintain the area.
Evans said the city also promised to put a large tree in the median at the bottom of West Street to dissuade trucks from turning into the neighborhood.
“All they put out there was a little stick of a tree,” Evans said. “I guess they meant it would be big in 10 or 20 years.”
Much improvement on the West Street traffic problem has been made but there is still work to be done. Evans husband witnessed a semi driving down West Street to the Cold Storage Saturday.
A source of the problem is Semi-Truck’s GPS systems. Many of the systems are not set up for routes that can accommodate large trucks said Evans and Breskin. Some GPS systems have even been found to be programmed for walking and bike trails. Truck drivers whose trips take them through multiple states are dependent on GPS systems in unfamiliar areas. This lack of correct information or local knowledge leads to trucks turning up streets such as West Street to find that they could not turn around.
Breskin and Evans are both proud of the work done by their community to maintain their safety while still keeping a good relationship with the city council.
“We’re organized and loud,” Evan said. “We’re going to make our needs known.”
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