Critical road, transit and active transportation improvements approved for Thurston County

The Thurston Regional Planning Council (TRPC) approved the award of $19.7 million in federal transportation funding to a slate of projects across the region.

The funding will support critical road, transit and active transportation improvements over the next five years.  

The funding comes from various federal programs:  

• Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG), $10 million 

• Congested Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ), $5 million 

• Transportation Alternatives Program (TA), $2.475 million 

• Carbon Reduction Program (CRP), nearly $1.7 million.  

At its Dec. 6 meeting, Paul Brewster, TRPC senior planner, said 16 proposals were received, which amounted to $24,028,000.

"What that presented was a $4.8 million funding gap. We have to be strategic with how we identify and prioritize projects," Brewster said.

• Among the proposals receiving awards: 

• Olympia's Martin Way Corridor Project - $2.5 million  

• Olympia's Pacific Avenue Enhanced Crosswalks - $1.3 million 

• Lacey's College Street Corridor Improvements Phase 3 - $1.5 million 

• Thurston County's Old Pacific Highway/Kuhlman Road Intersection Improvements - $1.6 million  

• Yelm's Rhoton Road NW Reconstruction - $1.7 million  

• Intercity Transit's Walk N' Roll (2026-30) - $1.6 million  

• Thurston County's Chehalis Western Trail Preservation Phase 1 - $1.6 million  

• Tumwater's Deschutes Valley Trail Segment C - $2.5 million  

In addition, the TRPC set aside funding for specific priorities, such as $600,000 for the Rural Community Support Program and $1 million for the regional shared-used trail network preservation fund.  

Brewster said the Transportation Policy Board subcommittee, which reviewed the proposals, used a performance-based evaluation system, scoring projects based on criteria aligned with regional funding priorities.

This allowed the council to allocate full funding to the highest-ranked projects within each geographic area, including urban, rural and congestion mitigation zones.  

"Even though the scores represent the most impactful projects, they're somewhat imperfect, and so the policy board wanted some flexibility to account for other benefits that projects could offer," Brewster said.

"Specifically was the TRPC's trail plan implementation. They thought that the regional trails plan implementation is an important piece of TRPC's transportation work program and that since TRPC just adopted the trails plan this time last year, it was important for TRPC to move that project forward and coordinate with the jurisdictions to help prioritize and identify future investments that the council could consider to enhance our trail network."