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 service for our transportation system,” Daley said. He added that “we cannot build our way out of congestion,” and urged the board to consider multimodal and operational strategies as well as capacity projects.

Why it matters: the regional plan guides which projects compete for state and federal dollars and is used in a certification review by the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration. Daley told commissioners that recent federal executive orders and related guidance have prompted Transportation Policy Board members to consider removing or rewording references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and greenhouse-gas reduction from documents submitted to federal agencies. That could put plan elements in tension with state law, including the Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act, which Daley said directs some state agencies to emphasize environmental equity.

Supporting details: Daley said the plan includes a target to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries, and the region has adopted the state target of zero by 2030. He described a Martin Way corridor strategy and a state-funded preliminary design to add up to 10 pedestrian crossings; he also said the draft lists strategic expansions and operational improvements, and that a Marvin Road extension would create a new north-south connection. The document's public comment period is open through May 9, 2025; Daley said the Policy Board will consider the draft in June and the Council is scheduled to take action July 10, 2025.

Commissioners asked about coordination with cities and economic-development organizations, and Daley described TRPC's land-use modeling process and outreach to local jurisdictions. He said the plan assumes continued success in securing state funding and takes funding assumptions from secured grants, statewide funding programs and reasonably foreseeable federal sources, but stressed uncertainty about how federal certification will treat plan language tied to DEI and greenhouse-gas goals.

On specific technologies and programs, Daley said electric-vehicle charging infrastructure remains an area of emphasis funded under the federal bipartisan infrastructure law, typically targeted to key highway corridors, and that autonomous-vehicle deployment has slowed but remains on regional planners' radar. He also cited safety trends: “serious and fatal injury accidents have definitely been trending in the wrong direction,” particularly pedestrian and bicycle collisions.

Next steps: TRPC will accept public comment through May 9 and expects to return the draft to the regional policy board in June before asking member jurisdictions to act in July. Daley told commissioners that TRPC will continue to monitor federal and state guidance on equity and climate language and will seek direction from member jurisdictions on how to proceed.

Ending: The board did not take formal action on the plan at the April 30 work session; commissioners sought additional discussion and directed staff to review the draft materials and brief the commission further as federal and state guidance evolves.