Sammamish holds public hearing on bike and pedestrian mobility plan; council asks for more data, clarifications

City staff opened a public hearing Oct. 7 on the draft Bike and Pedestrian Mobility Plan, outlining facility standards, a top-10 project list and five prioritized school-access projects that will feed into the city’s Transportation Improvement Program and the 2026 Transportation Master Plan update.

The plan aims to set comfort-level (Level of Traffic Stress) standards for bike and pedestrian facilities, provide policy recommendations on crosswalks and electric devices, and create a ranked project list for inclusion in the city’s capital plans. “I’m very excited to present to you the draft plan tonight,” said Audrey Sarcey, director of public works for the City of Sammamish.

Why it matters: the plan is the city’s first comprehensive guidance focused exclusively on walking and bicycling. It establishes how different street types should be retrofitted or redesigned to reach a target LTS, and produces a prioritized list of projects that staff said will be evaluated for the 6‑year CIP, a new 12‑year constrained list and the 20‑year unconstrained list.

Staff presentation and priorities

Lindsay Channing, the transportation planner and project manager, summarized the plan’s facility types and policies, including recommendations for separated bicycle lanes where collectors or minor arterials exceed 35 mph and 3,000 average daily trips. “This plan is also providing us some crosswalk policy recommendations,” Channing said, and noted staff will follow with a dedicated crosswalk study and right‑of‑way code updates.

Andrew Spiliotis, senior transportation planner, described the school-access analysis. The team identified roughly 19 school-related projects and costed the top five for inclusion in future TIP cycles; top items included restriping shoulders as bike lanes, filling sidewalk gaps near Pine Lake Middle School and sidewalk connectors near Margaret Mead and Samantha Smith elementaries. “We did a half‑mile buffer around all the public schools within the city,” Spiliotis said, explaining the walk‑shed approach to prioritize local‑street pedestrian gaps as well as collector and arterial work.

Top projects and costs

Staff said the top-10 project list ranges from corridor upgrades on 220th Avenue SE (Eighth Avenue SE/220th corridor) to connections to the East Lake Sammamish Trail. For the East Lake Sammamish Parkway access project, staff said the work would include crossings and trail access signage; one councilmember cited an estimate of about $3 million for three crossings and asked whether that reflected signalized or hybrid beacon crossings. Staff said the crossing element would likely be high‑cost treatments such as HAWK or hybrid beacons plus connection work and signage.

Questions from council and public

Council members pressed staff on several items: how the plan handles e‑bikes versus e‑scooters (policy will try to reconcile inconsistencies between state RCW and local code); whether priority scoring gives appropriate weight to school access vs. commercial centers; crash history and hot‑spot analysis; and how projects will be phased into the CIP and funded. Deputy Mayor Amy Lam asked about whether the plan enforces or changes where Class 1/2 e‑bikes and e‑scooters are allowed on sidewalks or roads; staff said the table in the plan reflects current RCW and existing city policy and that the code and standards update will address inconsistencies.

Residents who spoke at the hearing urged more and faster action in high‑need corridors—especially 220th/Avon areas, Englewood Hill Road and East Lake Sammamish Parkway—and described safety problems with mixed users on narrow shared paths and sidewalks. Several asked the city to study lower‑cost, quicker interventions such as improved striping, curb extensions and pavement‑marking material choices to improve durability and visibility.

Next steps and staff direction

Staff said the public hearing will remain open and the item is expected to return to council Oct. 21 for consideration of adoption after staff compiles responses. The plan’s project list will be rescored against CIP criteria next year for possible inclusion in the 2027–2032 6‑year Transportation CIP or the new constrained 12‑year list.

Staff emphasized the plan is advisory and intended to inform the TMP update and right‑of‑way/code revisions, not to authorize immediate construction. “These top 10 projects are ranked on the criteria we used; that doesn’t mean they are the top 10 we will start tomorrow,” Channing said.

Ending

The hearing generated detailed technical questions and a clear request for more data on crash locations, clearer costing and explanation of how developer frontage improvements and school mitigation interact with the prioritized projects. Staff committed to posting responses and updated materials before the Oct. 21 council meeting and to continuing work on the crosswalk study and right‑of‑way code updates that will follow adoption of the mobility plan.