U.S. 2 Safety Issue

  Gold Bar Bridge Report, August 03, 2006

 

 

  Gold Bar resident Ray Coleman, presenting a petition of Gold Bar residents to create safe pedestrian passage on a U. S. 2 bridge in their city.

 

 

(ABOVE - Shown left: Gold Bar's Ray Coleman and WSDOT's Rene Zimmerman. Shown right, a 2-foot pedestrian area on a bridge in Gold Bar which receives hundreds of gravel trucks per day. The photo shown above was just after overgrown blackberries --which normally block the pedestrian area -- were cut back by volunteer Gold Bar residents after a recent bicyclist fell into the travel lane of this area in the path of an oncoming truck. Only by the quick responses of the truck driver, assisted by the grace of God, was he saved.

 

 

At the Gold Bar National Night Out Against Crime, Ray Coleman gave Rene Zimmerman of WSDOT a petition for adding sidewalks for the east side Culvert Bridge to the U.S. 2 Route Development Plan. 

 

Seventy signatures from Gold Bar residents just east of and west of the bridge near mile marker 28 in Gold Bar (in Word, pdf) were gathered in support of making this bridge safer for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.  Citizen action, U.S. 2 Safety Coalition support, and WSDOT personnel were instrumental in getting long due maintenance started and in getting a long term solution into the U.S. 2 safety study.  So far, the blackberry bushes that protruded into the  pedestrian walkway next to the north railing have been trimmed back flush to the railing and the old pathway on the inside of the south railing has been cleaned out. 

 

More remains to be done, but the walkways are now fully usable as originally built.  However, extreme caution needs to be taken when making the crossing, especially on the north side. 

 

The next step is to have plans for code compliant sidewalks developed so that funding can be pursued.  Dongho Chang of WSDOT has been working with John Light, Public Works Director of Gold Bar, on this issue.