Thursday, October 1, 2026
In 2024, Tumwater officially opened three closely linked roundabouts at and near the intersection of Capitol Boulevard SE and Trosper Road SW. This project was the culmination of years of watchful observation by the city’s Engineering Department, as traffic congestion had inexorably climbed to unacceptable levels.
The $20 million endeavor was a major public works effort for a small municipality. While JOLT reader SecondOtter applied the humorous label "the three ring circus" to the project, to this untrained observer it appears that traffic flows more smoothly than before and the effort is viewed by the city’s staff as a success.
But the project, known as the Capitol Boulevard and Trosper Road Intersection Reconfiguration, didn’t get created in a vacuum. Instead, the construction effort was the outcome of an impossible choice faced by the city’s leadership: spend millions of dollars to increase the capacity of the most important intersection in Tumwater, or significantly scale back the Capitol Boulevard Corridor Improvement plan, the most comprehensive redevelopment effort ever contemplated for the community.
What follows is a five-part investigation into how the 1990 Washington State Growth Management Act (GMA) fundamentally altered how eight separate regions within Thurston County, collectively housing the majority of the county’s residents, are managed by the area’s local governments. And how which side of an urban planner’s line you live on fundamentally alters what you can do with the land you own.
While the example used to illuminate these issues is the crossing of two arterial roads in Tumwater, the issues highlighted impact every effort of local government in the region. Along the way this series will take a detour to examine why Tumwater chose to replace two signal-light controlled intersections with roundabouts — and then build a third one — and why The JOLT’s readers should expect to see many more intersections converted to roundabouts in the coming years.
Starting in the prosperous years following the end of World War II, developers seeking to build new homes in the United States often looked longingly to the sparsely developed territory beyond the urban core. Less expensive land meant lots could be more spacious, and developers could assemble the large contiguous tracts needed to accommodate the construction of hundreds of homes.
As a bonus, the creation of the Interstate Highway System in 1956 promised “free-ways,” absent the maddening delays of local roads. Soon, the rush to the hinterlands had begun.
The first mass-produced, federally supported suburban development in the country is generally credited to the efforts of Abraham Levitt, founder of the New York real estate development company he named after himself, Levitt & Sons. Not content to slap his surname just on his company, the community that he built on Long Island was christened Levittown.
Development began in 1947 and Levittown eventually grew to encompass more than 16,000 homes, spread over what had previously been 7 square miles of potato farms. During the height of construction, 30 new homes were completed each day, ensuring that Levittown entered the American lexicon, known for both its mass production efficiency, as well as a new post-war culture emphasizing conformity and uniformity.
In the years that followed, the preference for planned residential communities has only grown. The National Association of Homebuilders reports that “In 2024, 65.7% of (new) homes ... were built in a community or homeowner’s association.”
Economics has driven this transformation: when a developer can build multiple homes in a single project, building efficiency increases, lowering prices while increasing profits. This transformation has led to the 100 largest home builders in the U.S. accounting for "about half of all new single-family home sales."
And when a developer like Washington’s largest home builder, D.R. Horton, wants to open a new development, they don’t want to build a couple of houses — they want to build hundreds or even thousands.
While many people appreciate the benefits of planned developments, subdivisions gobble land. And large tracts of land that can be redeveloped for new housing are typically far from urban centers, creating long commutes for people who live there.
Where houses go, big box retailers and strip malls follow. New housing developments built on what had previously been farmland or wooded hills inevitably change the nature of the rural communities where they are created and tend to exacerbate traffic congestion.
Indeed, some economists argue that expanding freeways to serve distant housing communities can initially ease congestion but, through a process known as induced demand, over the long term tends to make congestion worse. Americans like their large homes in the suburbs, but bemoan the resulting long commutes and urban sprawl.
By the second half of the 1980s, the economy in Washington was on a tear. But many people were unhappy with the changes being wrought in their communities by the rapid growth. Washington’s voters were alarmed by chaotic traffic and soaring home prices in the suburbs.
The Washington state Growth Management Act, or GMA, was introduced in the Washington Legislature to address those concerns. This momentous legislation came into effect in 1990, and regulates where and how municipalities in the more populous counties in the state, including Thurston County, allow new development.
This series will not cover the entire breadth of how the GMA impacts residents in Thurston County — 194 pages of regulations in the Washington Administrative Code would be required to do that! Instead, it focuses on how the “concurrency” requirements of the GMA force municipalities to expand their highway network’s capacity to meet current and expected growth needs.
It’s a complex process that forces an intricate planning regime on each municipality in the region and makes development more difficult. The payoff is a limitation on growth that outstrips transportation system capacity. But the unintended consequence is complex governmental planning requirements — and the costs that inevitably follow.
In tomorrow’s segment: How the GMA impacts local government transportation initiatives
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JulesJames
Looking forward to this! Am fascinated by what metrics success/failure of the GMA are measured. Relevant because the recently controversial Climate Change Initiative also requires the same kind of “what was avoided” (or not) metrics.
Monday, June 15 Report this
RondaLarsonKramer
Thanks for devoting time and effort to this worthy topic. One thing I might note is that the GMA doesn’t make “growth more difficult.” Rather, it makes urban development inside urban areas easier and makes urban development outside urban areas harder. If it simply made growth more difficult, it would not achieve its aim of reducing sprawl. One reduces sprawl by easing both height limits and density limits in urban areas while doing the opposite in rural areas.
Monday, June 15 Report this
OlyBlues
Traffic may be flowing but SecondOtter's definition of a three ring circus is not far off. While most local residents are familiar with the roundabout craze, having three back to back roundabouts is a circus and it is a gauntlet for visitors and those unfamiliar with the area. Tumwater still managed to screw this project up by hiring incompetent engineers that miscalculated drainage and retention pond needs of the Trosper Road off ramp that almost immediately filled and flooded the ramp after opening. Tumwater has a mixed bag of road project success despite the road taxing district they instituted that should have resulted in the best roads in the county. It seems Tumwater's traffic engineers have learned a thing or two after their gross incompetence in allowing the Pilot truck stop to be built off 93rd Ave with no modifications to the overpass or traffic lights. The large increase in truck and vehicle traffic that followed was predictable but missed.
Tuesday, June 16 Report this
JW
If you can't figure out how to navigate roundabouts, even these three in their compact layout, then you have no business driving.
Tuesday, June 16 Report this
Somney
I find navigating consecutive traffic circles more confusing when they are located in close proximity to commercial property with large distracting signs, and one of those commercial properties might be your destination. When there is some sort of buffer between the traffic circle and you make a gradual approach and are able to focus just on traffic and the road and are more sure of your destination then I find more of the vehicles drive and will commit to the circle with more confidence.
Tuesday, June 16 Report this
Southsoundguy
Revelation of the ponzi.
Tuesday, June 16 Report this
Citizen
Although the traffic circles move traffic, the east bound Trosper Rd SW approach from S 2nd AV SW and Littlerock Rd SW is frequently jammed with traffic. Jammed at the Trosper & 2nd AV stop light and at Trosper and Tyee drive SW stop light. Recently, I sat through 2 stop light cycles at Trosper and 2nd AV as vehicles were jammed at the light eastbound at Trosper and Tyee. The short distance from Trosper and 2nd AV to Trosper and Tyee is the problem. As traffic tries to move through the Trosper and 2nd AV intersection east bound, they block the intersection waiting for the light to turn green.
A perfectly predicable problem. Unsurprisingly, the traffic circles failed to address an existing traffic problem at the intersections.
Tuesday, June 16 Report this
SAlexander
I live close to where the City of Tumwater is building a new roundabout. They have been doing construction in or near my road now for years! It seems like once they get going , they just keep on, without regard for the people who are being impacted. Who knows why they do this because the people impacted are never told anything. All we see are signs going up that the road use will be impacted. Come on people; ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!
Tuesday, June 16 Report this
Yeti1981
Interesting article and an important topic.
One perspective that I hope gets explored as the series continues is that growth brings both costs and benefits. The article does a good job discussing concerns about traffic, infrastructure demands, and development pressures, but communities also benefit significantly from housing construction through job creation, tax revenue, local business activity, and expanded housing opportunities.
Growth is often discussed primarily in terms of what it costs a community. The other side of the equation is what happens when housing production falls behind population growth. Housing affordability challenges throughout Washington suggest that the consequences of underbuilding deserve consideration as well.
The real policy challenge is finding the balance between managing growth responsibly while still providing enough housing and infrastructure to support the people who live and work here.
Wednesday, June 17 Report this
Yeti1981
@RondaLarsonKramer, The GMA certainly encourages urban development relative to rural development, and that has been one of its primary goals. However, after 35 years, I think it is also reasonable to ask whether the cumulative effect of concurrency requirements, permitting processes, infrastructure obligations, environmental review, and land supply constraints has made housing production more difficult and more expensive overall. The real policy question may not be whether the GMA successfully reduced sprawl, it clearly had a significant impact there, but whether we've found the right balance between growth management objectives and housing affordability.
Wednesday, June 17 Report this
RondaLarsonKramer
@Yeti1981, The arguments about environmental regulations, the GMA, and land supply constraints are all variations of the same claim: that regulation is limiting housing supply and therefore causing the affordability crisis.
The problem is that the data do not support that premise in Thurston County. The 2021 Buildable Lands Report found that development capacity within existing urban growth areas exceeded projected housing needs. Since then, the Legislature has increased development capacity even further through middle-housing legislation.
Nor does the available rental market data suggest scarcity. Thurston County's apartment vacancy rate is about 5%, which is generally considered a balanced rental market rather than one experiencing scarcity. Yet affordability challenges persist, suggesting that housing affordability is influenced by factors beyond housing supply alone. Those factors include wages, transportation costs, infrastructure costs, financing costs, and insurance costs. In addition, there is a shortage of government-supported affordable housing programs to assist households that cannot afford market-rate housing.
The available evidence does not support the claim that the GMA or environmental regulations are major drivers of today's affordability challenges.
Moreover, removing growth-management and environmental regulations would shift many costs to taxpayers and households through increased infrastructure demands, longer commutes, and more dispersed development patterns. And it would simultaneously cause a loss of farmland, forests, and resource lands and would fragment habitat corridors.
Tuesday, June 23 Report this