County staff present multimodal, ADA and climate-driven changes to transportation chapter

Clark County planners briefed the county council on proposed changes to the comprehensive plan's transportation chapter, describing new multimodal level-of-service standards, an ADA transition plan and a reorganization to align the chapter with recent state law.

Oliver Ojekka, the county's community planning director, opened the July 8 work session by urging councilors to review the draft materials and submit questions through the county manager or directly to staff, adding, "we are not asking you to make any decision today." He also told the council staff expects to publish the final environmental impact statement by July 24 and will open a 30-day public comment period when it is released.

Susan Poizner, a transportation planner, said the chapter was rewritten to reflect requirements of the Growth Management Act and recent state legislation referred to in the presentation as the climate bill (House Bill 1181). "The green highlights indicate the new changes to chapter 5," Poizner said, explaining that the green text is newly proposed and yellow highlights mark earlier 2025 changes. The revisions aim to broaden focus beyond driving to "safe transportation needs for all users," including transit, walking, biking and rolling.

Poizner described several substantive additions: 11 tables and 11 figures documenting missing sidewalks and bicycle facilities, miles of county roads by functional classification, intersections of regional significance, vehicle-miles-traveled estimates and the performance of transit service (C-TRAN) and freight lines. She said staff used a mix of local inventories (sidewalk and bicycle inventories), the county CRAB report, GIS analysis, the RTC regional travel model and federal highway performance data to create those exhibits.

The chapter links the transportation element to the land-use assumptions council adopted earlier: staff reiterated the council's 2045 population projection of 718,154 and a 2045 employment projection of 269,000; staff said the council's preferred land-use alternative selected April 28 directs planning for 32,960 housing units in unincorporated areas and will inform the transportation needs analysis.

Poizner also emphasized two new requirements from the climate legislation: multimodal level-of-service standards that explicitly cover active transportation and an ADA transition plan now required by statute. She said the county is striving to achieve level-of-traffic-stress standards adopted by WSDOT (a target of LTS 2 in the Vancouver unincorporated urban growth area and LTS 3 for many rural roads) and that the 20-year capital facilities plan will include projects to close active-transportation gaps.

Councilors asked several clarifying questions. One asked whether the 2010 Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan should be updated; Poizner said advisory groups have pushed for an update and staff has discussed a potential 2027 or 2028 effort. Another asked why rail freight was not more prominently shown; staff replied that rail is treated as ground transportation and as a county-owned freight facility (the Cholachee Railroad) but flagged that lease/operator issues and related policy choices were beyond the current chapter's scope and could be brought back for further direction.

Why this matters: the chapter frames how the county balances future growth with transportation investments, ties active-transportation goals to funding priorities and sets technical standards the county will use to evaluate projects. Staff said the chapter and appendices are posted for public review and that councilors will see additional work sessions and a hearing before final adoption.

The council did not take action at the work session; staff said they will bring traffic-impact-fee recalculations and other appendix details to the final work session on July 29 and that adoption will include direction on which funding options staff should explore post-adoption.