Yelm Bypass Round Up

With some recent confusion over the status of the Yelm Bypass funding, I emailed Dennis Engel, who is listed as the Project Engineer WSDOT Olympic Region for the project (the SR 510 – Yelm Loop)

Under the current funding we have right of way and preliminary engineering (design) funded. There are three seperate budgets being worked on. The first one to come out was the Governor’s budget. This had no money for the Yelm Loop in the biennium that starts in July. The Senate and House have both issued their transportation budgets that include a little over $11 million for Yelm Loop.

The City of Yelm has been working with the legislature to fund the construction of phase 1 of the project. Phase 1 is a little over 1 mile that goes from Mud Run Road to Cullins Road. The money earmarked by the legislature is potentially for phase 1.

We are currently designing a portion of the Yelm Loop, concentrating on the area within the limits of phase 1. We have purchased almost all of the right of way in the phase 1 area and expect to have all the right of way for the entire Yelm Loop, with the exception of 3 parcels, purchased by the end of June. If the money is approved for construction we are looking at an October 2009 advertisement date.

So the City has motivation to complete Phase One, which would run traffic thru several ‘yet to be developed, but city zoned’ areas north of Yelm, but only to Cullins Road, not even to Canal Rd which could then route some of the traffic around town?

And if the rest of the money is funded, am I the only one who still thinks the bypass is a horrible idea?

I have noticed survey crews out by the 510 Curve North of town, by Mud Run Rd Se, this week. Are they taking measurements in anticipation of the start of a road project that could very well starve the current business in Yelm and put a nine stop bypass around town that runs past existing housing developments, feeding the Industrial Zoned section in Yelm and going past the city park?