When the facts don't add up, make 'em up

An article in indicates that in order for the City of Lakewood to apply for $2.4 million in street improvements, the city had to provide evidence of “high rates of single-intersection-related crashes.”

So why didn’t the highly contested – and congested – Tillicum interchange of Berkeley-Union-I-5 qualify?

After all, Sec.2.1 of Camp Murray’s Environmental Assessment – the 2010 version – claimed the move of its gate from its current location – at this specific intersection – was necessitated by “life safety and health risks” that occur there. 

What “life safety and health risks”?

According to documents requested by the City of Lakewood from Camp Murray in 2010, the last accident at the Berkeley-Union intersection in Tillicum was 2006.  There have been in fact five accidents fronting Camp Murray’s existing gate since 1976.

Contrary to the Washington Military Department’s (WMD) safety-hazard contentions that comprise some of its primary gate-relocate rationale, Dave Bugher, Lakewood’s Assistant City Manager of Community Development, chastised the WMD for being less than disingenuous in its assessment.  “There is no data included,” wrote Bugher, “such as longitudinal accident rates and locations to suggest that it (the intersection) is unsafe.”

Bugher then declares, “The primary impetus for the new main gate is convenience.”*

So, to answer my own question as to why the Berkeley intersection wasn’t the recipient of this grant to improve citizen safety, the answer is because - WMD’s protestations to the contrary - this particular corner of their world didn’t qualify.

*(page 2 of a 12-page single spaced letter of a 11-count indictment of Camp Murray’s gate relocate plans, a letter from Bugher to Thomas Skjervold, Environmental Programs Manager, Division of Facilities and Grounds, September 16, 2010.)