City council ready to prop up development of hundreds of homes

A day after staff revealed the last data on the new concurrency rules, a split Sammamish city council took action to save development of hundreds, potentially thousands, of new homes, from what looks like an inevitable shut down of growth in Sammamish due to lack of road capacity.

Led by Council member Jason Ritchie, the council voted 4-3 to prepare an ordinance to lift the moratorium off the Town Center, for the next council meeting on October 16. Lifting the moratorium in the next meeting will likely exempt the Town Center from the new concurrency rules that have not yet taken effect.

New concurrency data reveal massive roads capacity failures

Concurrency is a state law requirement to prohibit development if transportation infrastructure falls behind the needs of residents. Last year, this author revealed that city of Sammamish fudged its concurrency program for for over 12 years, ignoring congestion and allowing development. For almost a year now, staff and council have been working to overhaul concurrency so it reflects the traffic conditions Sammamish commuters face every day.

Last Monday night, as the process nears it completion, staff shared with council the latest iteration and traffic data. The data, shown in the table below, reveal several of the arterials carry more volume of cars than their capacity, a condition also known as “concurrency failures.” This is the first time in the history of the city that official city data show concurrency failures on arterials.

According to this table, 6 of 10 listed arterials fail.

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