City to rewrite transportation chapter to reflect recent TOD, safety and multimodal studies

Spokane planning staff told the combined Plan Commission and Transportation Commission on April 9 that the city will begin rewriting the transportation chapter of the Plan Spokane comprehensive update in July to integrate recommendations from a series of recent studies, and that drafts will be returned to the commissions this fall.

The rewrite matter because the transportation chapter guides project selection, capital programming and street design standards that will shape where and how multimodal investments — from bus rapid transit station area work to bicycle and pedestrian improvements — are implemented across Spokane.

"As part of the comprehensive plan update, we'll be updating the transportation chapter," said Colin Quinhurst, planning staff who led the briefing. He told commissioners the rewrite will synthesize roughly nine adopted or near-adopted plans and studies from the last five years and translate their recommendations into the transportation chapter's policies and implementation steps. "We thought this would be a good opportunity to kinda do some background on recent recommendations," Quinhurst said.

Staff said the rewrite will emphasize several themes that recur across recent planning work: matching street design with adjacent land uses (including transit-oriented development around high-frequency transit), improving neighborhood livability, prioritizing safety and convenient access for walking and biking, and aligning utility and pavement work so projects are efficient to build — a "dig once" approach. Quinhurst described the city’s planning hierarchy and timeline for turning high-level vision into projects: neighborhood/subarea plans → comprehensive plan (20-year horizon) → capital facilities plans → annual/6‑year capital programs.

Staff enumerated recent studies whose recommendations will be incorporated into the chapter, including the downtown plan, a TOD framework study, DivisionConnects (Division Street BRT planning), South Logan TOD work, the West Central neighborhood infrastructure planning, Hillyard subarea planning, the bicycle priority network work and other subarea or station-area studies. Quinhurst and staff cited the Downtown and TOD work as pushing the city to focus on station-area access and to treat lower‑traffic downtown streets as opportunities for bike facilities, parking and public space rather than always prioritizing vehicle throughput.

Commissioners raised several implementation questions. Commissioner Williams asked whether delays in the North–South corridor could change other project timing; staff replied that Spokane Transit Authority is "actively revising their strategy right now to kind of phase it," and that staff and regional partners are discussing phased approaches to keep projects moving.

Commissioner Francis pressed staff on state mandates that could affect the rewrite; staff said the multimodal level-of-service requirement and a proposed TOD bill in the legislature are items to track and could influence content or reporting requirements in the comp plan appendices. Commissioners also noted that the city’s pedestrian master plan is roughly 10 years old and flagged that update as a gap; staff said interim steps (for example, the bike-priority work and a sidewalk-inventory update) are underway and that a full rewrite of the transportation chapter will provide an opportunity to align those pieces.

Quinhurst provided a timetable for the chapter rewrite: staff plan to begin drafting in July, return to the two commissions with draft text between August and November, and aim to produce a complete draft by December that can be incorporated into the larger Plan Spokane document.

Staff also summarized public engagement tied to Plan Spokane: one round of engagement generated roughly 170 participants across four open houses and one agency meeting; staff said those comments will be compiled and released later in April and that public workshops on specific chapters will begin in May. Quinhurst invited commissioners and the public to upcoming events, including Earth Day community workshops and market outreach.

The presentation finished with requests for commissioner feedback on priorities and local network issues such as connectivity, breaking up superblocks and handling street vacations so pedestrian and bike connections are preserved.

Looking ahead, staff said they will bring successive chapter drafts to both commissions, and pointed to the role of subarea planning and station-area work in making the chapter’s policies actionable during the capital-programming process.

Ending: Staff requested commissioner input as drafts emerge and reiterated the July start for drafting; Quinhurst said commissioners and the public will have multiple opportunities to review and comment through the late‑summer and fall schedule.