Regional planners present 25-year transportation plan; warn equity and climate language may face federal scrutiny

Mark Daley, executive director of the Thurston Regional Planning Council, presented the agency's draft 25-year regional transportation plan to the Thurston County Board of Commissioners at a work session on April 30, 2025. Daley said the plan is the foundation for regional transportation priorities, includes 80 regional projects and must be fiscally constrained to qualify for federal funding.

The plan forecasts more than 100,000 additional residents and roughly 52,000 new jobs over the next 20 years, Daley said, and projects include about 18 miles of new roadway, 36 miles of added general-purpose or turn lanes, 65 miles of bicycle and pedestrian facilities and 29 miles of multiuse trails. The draft also highlights safety, equity and greenhouse-gas reduction as central goals and assumes continued state and federal funding to meet those goals.

“The first thing is that our planned land use and roadway capacity over the next 25 years…will not be sufficient to meet our regionally adopted targets and goals around level of…