College Place advisory commission hears update on comprehensive safety action plan

College Place Utility and Transportation Advisory Commission members received an update Jan. 9 on the city’s federally funded Comprehensive Safety Action Plan and the timeline for applying for implementation funds.

Spencer Montgomery, an engineer with JEB Engineers (the city engineer consultant for College Place), told the commission the study—funded through the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All program with local match—covers all travel modes, requires robust public involvement, and is intended to identify priority projects the city can submit for implementation funding. "The big goal nationwide, and we hear this a lot, in the transportation world is, having a goal of 0 fatalities and serious injuries," Montgomery said.

The plan will compile collision history and safety analysis, consider equity and vulnerable users, review existing policies and programs (including the city’s ADA transition work and a 2021 local road safety study) and produce a prioritized list of countermeasures and projects for intersections and roadway segments. Montgomery said the city already has a resolution adopting the goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries and that the study’s results would be used to target implementation grants due in late spring–early summer.

Montgomery summarized five years of collision data the team reviewed: 440 total collisions, including one fatality and four suspected serious injuries, with 22 suspected minor injuries and 54 possible injuries. He said the most common first collision types were "entering at an angle" (116 incidents) and rear-end collisions (94), and that 63 collisions involved parked cars and 62 involved fixed objects. He noted bicycle and pedestrian collisions accounted for the four suspected serious injuries and the single fatality in the five‑year window.

The consultant described public outreach to date: a Farmers Market booth and an online map-based survey that yielded 415 comments. Streets that received the most comments were Larch, College Avenue, 12th Street, Meyer Road and Whitman Drive; the intersection with the highest number of collisions was Meadowbrook Boulevard at Highway 125 (26 collisions), Montgomery said. He also showed heat maps and tables ranking intersections and corridors by collisions and contributing circumstances.

Commissioners asked how the plan will prioritize projects. Montgomery outlined candidate criteria the team is testing: functional classification, traffic volume, collision counts and rates, number of fatal/serious injuries, presence or absence of sidewalks, speed data, transit and school routes, and equity indicators (poverty, zero/one-car households, age and disability). On how equity would be applied, Montgomery said jurisdictions typically award additional points to routes in census tracts with higher concentrations of those indicators.

Commissioner Gomez asked specifically about four-way stops in neighborhoods: "I have a question about the 4 way stops since I been looking in my neighborhood. Okay. And Larch has a lot of 4 way stops. Is it does it seem to be related to that, the problems there?" Montgomery said stop‑controlled intersections can change driver behavior and that corridor or multi-intersection projects (for example, a roundabout or corridor improvements) might be appropriate for some locations such as Larch and 12th.

Commissioner Williams raised parking as a safety issue and noted council interest in creating off‑street parking: "This is commissioner Williams. 1 of the things that the city council is working on is putting in some parking lots so that we can legitimately maybe cut down on some of the on street parking." Montgomery acknowledged parked‑car collisions (63 in five years) and said some countermeasures could include cross‑section changes or one‑way conversions where appropriate.

Montgomery described preliminary cost context drawn from prior city work: the ADA transition plan estimated about $24.7 million to fill all sidewalk gaps citywide; at the current local spending rate Montgomery cited—about $250,000 per year—that would take roughly 99 years to complete, but he noted that at that funding level the city could cover about half of the highest‑priority functionally classified roads within a six‑year program and could reach full coverage of those functionally classified roads in roughly 12 years if funding and practices are sustained.

He told the commission the team is still finalizing prioritization scoring and accident‑rate calculations and expected to return in February with tables, a proposed weighting/criteria framework and summaries of public comments. Montgomery said the project team hopes to have a draft document available in time for a fall‑spring application cycle and that the team was aiming for adoption by late April so the city could be eligible for implementation grants; he asked commissioners for feedback before the public review. No formal action was taken on the plan at the meeting; commissioners will consider a draft in a future meeting before any recommendation to city council.

Ending: Montgomery said the team will distribute the full set of public comments and the draft tables before the next UTAC meeting in February so commissioners can review materials in advance. The commission asked staff to monitor grant deadlines and possible schedule steps for recommending the plan to city council.