Planning Commission - workshop

Hey, everybody. I am Zach Davis-Price. I'm the communication and outreach supervisor at Public Works here in Thurston County. So I get to kick us off. Thank you all for joining us for this live presentation. Thanks for all your feedback. We got a lot of great survey answers. Those of you who have signed up for the email alerts already, that's absolutely fantastic. Appreciate that. Tonight, we're going to talk a little bit about the trail history, how it's maintained, sort of go through an overview of what the project looks like, and hopefully answer any outstanding questions that you have. If you are familiar with the project, I will add some information into the chat or follow up with you. So you'll know where to go. If you haven't been to our project page yet, it's an excellent place to find updates as we go through the project. And also there's a spot there for signing up for receiving updates as we go. So we're going to try to keep you as updated up to the minute as possible as we go. And it seems like there's 130 or so people already signed up. So hopefully most of you have already done that. The project page, though, will keep updated. And if you have questions, you'll always be able to submit those to us as we go along this process. Before we get completely started here, our project team today that's going to be presenting is Steve Bricker, who's our construction engineering and support manager. We've got Abby Haley, who's our communications specialist one, who's been doing a lot of work on connecting with everybody already. She set this whole webinar up, so nice job, Abby. Ben Enfield, who we'll hear from quite a bit tonight, is our Senior Civil Engineer and Project Manager for this particular project. So he'll share quite a bit about what we're going to get into with the actual ins and outs of the project. And lastly, but not leastly, is Ed Marson. As some of you probably know, Ed is our Parks and Trails Maintenance and Operations Manager. And he's going to start us off by giving us a little bit of background and information on the trail itself. So I'm going to Turn it over to you, Ed, if you mind coming on camera.

There we are. Good afternoon, everybody. I am Ed Morrison. I'm the Thurston County Parks Maintenance and Operations Manager, as Zach previously mentioned. I just wanted to give you guys a brief overview of the history, ownership, and maintenance of the Chehalis Western Trail. Most of you may know a lot of this information, but some of you may not, so we just want to kind of get you up to date. The Shadis Western Trail is a 22-mile, fully paved, multi-use trail, which is operated and maintained by Thurston County Public Works. Not only does the trail pass through the urban areas of the county, but it also passes through diverse ecosystems, including dense forests, wetlands, and prairies. The trail was originally built in 1926 by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. It was used as a logging railroad. The corridor transported timber from Vail to a log dump at Woodard Bay for about 60 years. And many of those logs were floated all the way up to Everett to the large sawmills up there for milling. Thurston County acquired the abandoned rail line in segments between the years of 1989 and 2009, eventually building major pedestrian overpasses that span Martin Way, I-5, and Pacific Ave. Because it was built for heavy trains, the trail only climbs or climbs less than 350 feet over its entire 22 mile length. With almost all of those minor elevation change coming from those ascending those pedestrian overpasses. Today, the Chavis Western Trail serves as an integral transportation and recreation highway used heavily by pedestrians, wheeled traffic, equestrians in certain areas, and local commuters traveling between Olympia, Lacey, Rainier, and other areas of the county.

Awesome. Thank you, Ed. We're going to turn it over at this time to Ben Enfield. He's going to tell us a little bit about the project funding.

All right. Thank you, Zach. So this is a big project. The total estimated cost for this project is approximately $2.24 million. With federal grants being the primary source of our funding for this, the Thurston County or the Thurston Regional Planning Council, also known as TRPC, they've been crucial in making this project happen. They awarded us three separate grants that together cover 86.5%. of the project costs. The remaining 13.5% of the project cost is a match to those grants and it's provided by real estate excise tax. The The reason we're going with pavement preservation, which this project is called the Chehalis Western Trail Pavement Preservation Project, is because pavement replacement is much more expensive than pavement preservation. So rather than waiting until the pavement is so bad that we have to rip it up, and completely redo the pavement section. We are targeting some of the worst areas to replace, and then we're going to go through and do an asphalt overlay. And this work will really fix the bad parts, and it'll extend the life of the trail. And it's very cost efficient as far as long-term maintenance goes. So yeah, this really gives us the most bang for our buck rather than going around and finding the worst places in the trail and doing spot repairs. If we do some targeted improvements and then do this whole overlay and continuous sections, we really increase our efficiency. Okay. And so some of the reasons why we chose these stretches of trail. I know that's a big question we've heard is, you know, why are you working here instead of somewhere else? And we do have a lot of reasons for that. We know that there's other areas of the trail in the county that do need work. Unfortunately, we can't hit them all. But one of the big drivers for where we're working right now is that the grants that we received, they do have some requirements. And one of those requirements is that we include both urban and rural areas in our project. And to get that urban area, we really do have to include some of the areas between like Yelm Highway and 26th. Also, we do have previous studies and outreach work by TRPC, and they've indicated these areas that we're looking at are some pretty high priority areas for the community. And besides that, It just makes logistical sense for us to start at one terminus of the trail and work our way south. So by starting at the end, we can kind of complete one section and then we move on to our next phase of construction. We don't have to jump around at the county and we can really make our money stretch a little further. So I'll kind of dig into these proposed work areas. This map that you're seeing here shows... of a vicinity of uh where we're working um you know you can see i-5 there right in the middle where we the the shales western trail crosses near the the woodland uh woodland trail um so we're we're starting in the north uh at woodard bay um that's the the northern terminus of the trail and we're working down uh south uh this shows us going all the way down to uh yelm highway I'll get into some of the specifics of the different segments. We may not be able to get all the way down to Yelm Highway, depending on our construction bids. We have some base bid sections and some alternate sections, which I can cover later. in these next slides here, this map is really showing the same area, it's just zoomed in a little bit. And you can see that what we've done is we've broken up this work area into different segments, is what we're calling them. And these segments are between major access points on the trail. You usually see them between a trail parking lot or between major roads, where if you're on the trail, these segments that we're working on, you won't be in the middle of the trail when you come across a construction sign. You'll be at a main segment. I'm not sure if the text may be a little small, but as we go from Woodard Bay, it goes from segment one is Woodard Bay to 56th Avenue Northeast. And then we go from segment two is 56th to 46th. Segment three would be 46th to South Bay Road. And then segment four is South Bay Road to 26th Avenue Northeast. And then 26th to Martin Way, segment five. And segment six is Martin Way to Pacific Avenue. So those six segments are what we call the base bid. Those will... no doubt, be completed as part of this project. Excuse me. What we have is two additional, what we call additive alternate segments, and those segments are further south, and we're hoping we can get those done. It all depends on our public bids. We have our project budget, and we really would like to be able to add those additional segments. It just depends if we get good contract bids, and hopefully we can include those in the ultimate project. But those two additive segments are from 14th Avenue down to Herman Road, which is Herman Road and 37th Avenue right there. They converge at the trail. And then from Herman down to Yelm Highway. One important note, you may notice that there is a gap in these segments. And that gap is between Pacific Avenue and 14th Street. We're not doing any work as part of our project in that section of the trail. But it is important to note that Puget Sound Energy, they are doing a separate project where they're going to be installing a gas main in that section of the trail. So they'll plan to do that work next spring also. They'll be installing a gas main, and as part of their work, they will rebuild that section of trail. So it's not included as a county project, but... we will make sure we're broadcasting PSEs, their construction, and making sure that what they are doing is kind of thrown into the website so that work is known. We don't have as much control over that work, but we'll make sure that the coordination is there. And next, I'll go into some of the more detailed... uh, engineering plan stuff. Um, so what we're actually going to do for this project, uh, so we're going to, we're going to go through for every section of that trail that we showed there, we're going to do a grind and overlay, which, um, The grind, sometimes it's called milling or planing, is where we'll have a machine that goes down the trail. It has teeth that rip up a specified depth of that asphalt. So we're not going to take up the entire depth of asphalt. We're going to take an inch and a half of asphalt out. And what that does is that gets rid of any of the small surface cracking. It gets rid of some minor surface variations. And it also gives us a good base for when we come back through and do our pavement overlay that will have a really solid pavement section that will last us for a long time. And I'll talk a little bit about this microgrind, which is different than a grind. I'll talk about that in the following slide. So the other thing we'll be doing is full width repair. There are certain sections that we won't be able to just repair the surface, that we have some failures in either the sub base or we have something going on under the pavement where we'll have to do a full depth repair. So we will excavate the entire pavement section out and replace it with a new pavement section. If you've been using the trail, you may have seen some white paint on the trail. What we've done is some of those areas we've marked off where we're going to do a complete full depth repair. Some of them are partial depth. The partial width where we might do half the trail or a few feet of the trail. But those white markings really show where we're going to do a full depth repair. And one other note, which just add kind of interesting is we will be doing fiber reinforced asphalt with our overlay. This is a type of asphalt that we've used on a lot of our road projects. It's a fairly new technology, but it adds some extra durability to the pavement. It kind of resists some of the cracking. It'll help that pavement last longer, get a little bit more wear out of that trail. Edge repair. These ones where you may have noticed on some sections of the trail where the edge is getting undermined. A lot of times it happens where there's little neighborhood paths that come up to the trail. People walk and After a while, the edge starts wearing down, it gets undermined, and you start seeing some raveling. We will be repairing some of those edge conditions. In order to reinforce those, we'll go in, we'll install a gabion basket, which is just a metal frame with rock, and then some construction geotextile to make sure that those edges stay sound and we don't have any future problems with raveling in those areas. Okay, the next one. This one is one that I think if you use the trail, you're probably familiar with some root issues. there's there's roots uh in many sections of this trail that have caused upheaval in the pavement um it's one of the the more common complaints we get um so for areas where we have root upheaval we will be uh excavating basically for a full depth repair uh we'll go in we'll go down two feet and uh we will remove any any roots that are causing pavement upheaval um There's only one tree that we have identified currently that would be removed. And that's a tree that's in the trail. It's basically right in the edge of the trail. So the trunk is encroaching on the edge of pavement. It's really one location we have with this work area. But everywhere else, most of these routes that are causing problems are pretty far away from the trail, or the tree is pretty far away from the trail. Um, taking out a couple of roots is, uh, something that we can do and maintain some, most of that tree health, but we will have an arborist, uh, that is on board that will be on board for construction. When we get to some of these areas where we have tree root removal, we'll have an arborist, uh, that will make sure that the, the work we're doing to remove those roots is not something that's going to cause, um, problems with tree health. Um, And also to make sure that we don't have future issues after this, in these areas where we remove roots, we'll be installing some root barriers, which is basically it's a reinforced plastic that goes down a couple feet. It redirects roots so they go deeper where they go off to the side, and they won't cause future issues if we have any more roots growing in those areas. Okay. I'll start off this slide real quick. So another big thing I'm sure a lot of people on this call are very interested in is our construction timeframe. So unfortunately, construction scale is not fully finalized yet. We know that everybody's really eager to to know when exactly your stretches of trail that you frequent are going to be closed. Unfortunately, we won't know all those really detailed schedule things for a little while. Currently, we're working with WSDOT, who is the grant manager for the funding for this trail. to get our final approval to bid this project. Once we have that approval, which we expect soon, we will put this project out to a competitive public bid, where we will evaluate bids and go with the lowest bid. And in that case, hopefully we have a low enough bid to do those two alternates also. We do expect that we will likely have construction start this fall. And that construction timeframe will be a couple months. We have about 80 working days in our contract, but it will depend on some weather. It will be weather dependent too. So this will probably stretch into spring of next year. And with that, I'll let Steve Bricker, our construction manager, talk a little bit more about some of the details of construction.

I'm Steve Bricker, the construction manager for Public Works. Before I get too much into my section, I do just want to say that The county really spent a lot of time, as far as closures, considering all the different users, looking at the TRPC studies, surveys, and a lot of time talking with our parts manager about the right balance between construction speed, cost, and then also making the trail available to the users. So what we ultimately landed on was that we wanted to find a way to do this, but we could still provide access to the trail daily for all the segments of the trail. So basically Ben kind of talked about it earlier with the projects split into multiple, you know, approximately one mile segments. And so for those segments, a few days in advance of the closure, we post that we're going to be doing a daily closure. We haven't exactly landed on the exact hours. We're thinking maybe 8 to 5, but that could change slightly. And so it would be during the day, and then we'd be reopening the trail every night so that everybody that uses that segment still gets a chance to use that trail segment every day. And then also on the weekends, it'll be available morning, Monday through the weekends. We will also be posting, I know a lot of people are wondering what's going to be out in the field, but we can see when we walk up to a drill segment. So we will have a sign posted ahead of time. This segment's going to be closed, you know, starting next Wednesday, that kind of thing. And then we'll have a rough date of when we, I expect that to be open all the time during the day as well. One thing I do want people to keep in mind is that in order for us to make the trail available every night and have it opened up in the evenings, it's not going to be the same trail you're used to seeing every day. So there will be places where we dug out the tree works that are going to have gravel patches. So there's going to be loose gravel, things like that. We're going to mill the pavement as well. We are doing the micro mill that Ben talked about a little bit. It's something we haven't used before, but we really wanted to spec that out for this project because typical mill. It's great for a car, but a little, you know, quite a bit rougher on a bicycle. So we've specified the smallest mill that we could do as far as the spacing between the meters and the milling. It'll be about a quarter inch spacing. But we really wanted to do that to try to give you guys the best, smoothest construction ground trail that we could. And then as far as the types of work that we will need to close the trail for, before I get into too much, I do want to say this is because the trail width is about the width of the driving plane and certain work activities, we need to be able to have a dump truck, use the trail, back down the trail, that kind of thing. and in order to do that there's not really a way to leave the trail open and then use the full width of construction equipment and truck so When we're doing the vegetation clearing in the beginning on one of these segments, that is a portion of all this maybe falling branches, that kind of thing. We don't feel like it's safe to have a segment open. So when we're vegetation clearing, we will have it closed again during the day. Hey, Steve.

Sorry to interrupt you. It sounds like you're a little quiet to some folks, so I don't know if you can move a little closer to Mike. There you go. Yeah. Thanks.

Is that better? Yeah. Okay. Also, when we're doing subgrade repairs, the removal, patching, and shoulder repairs and stabilization that Ben talked about, we will need to close the trail for that, so we'll need to fill the width of the trail. When we're milling and grinding the pavement, we'll need to close the trail during the day for that as well. And then when we come to do our final paving and We'll be closing during the day for that work as well. There are a lot of work activities on the job that we looked at. There's a few that don't require us to have it closed during the day where we can one lane alternate the trail, which is nice. So we looked at that and tried to figure out how to do certain things while we have the trail down the one lane. So when we're doing the permanent sign installation, when we're replacing bollards and sawing bollards, we can do one lane of the trail open with one-way traffic, placement of striping markings, ADA maps, those kinds of things. We leave the trail open all day for those work activities. And to wrap up, I just, I want to say, I know this is, construction's always tough to deal with and it's difficult to lose access during the day to the trail, but this is going to be a really smooth trail when it's all done. I really hope that we get feedback from you guys. This is your favorite section of the trail and we're all done. So I know there's going to be a little bit of pain, but at the end of the day we're going to have you know seven to ten miles of trail that is going to probably not really work until 2045 2050 other than regular maintenance work that the park street does and uh with that i'll quickly close that

Thanks, Steve. I'm off mute. That's good. So I had mentioned before some ways that we're going to be communicating out through our project pages. And thank you, Karen. I was in a rush there, and I said chat. And when I said chat, I meant Q&A. So if you're looking for the link to our project page, Or if you want to sign up for our email, I answered Karen's question there in the very first Q&A. We'll also be sending out an email follow up with this. We're going to post the recording. We're going to answer any questions that we are not able to get to today, don't have the time for, don't have enough information to answer well. And I'll include these links and an email for us so that you can reach out anytime. So that'll come tomorrow. We'll send that out to you so you can follow up with that. The video might take a couple of days, but we'll send the follow-up email out tomorrow with the links to make sure that you have those. So beyond that, um, we'll also have trail signs. We're going to try to get as many sandwich boards out there as we can. We'll put some QR codes on there. So that'll also point folks back to the project pages and to the email for updates. So we're going to try to stay on top of everything as quickly as we can to let you know, up to the minute, um, our updates because, uh, I'm a Thurston County resident. I go on the Chehalis Western Trail just off Yelm Highway down here to go for walks, too. So it's important I know for when I'm leaving, do I know that this part is going to be open or closed? So thank you. And I appreciate everybody putting questions into the chat. We'll try to get to those. We've got some general questions that were given to us in the surveys prior. And then If we can, time permitting, we'll have some of these answered by our panel. And if there's any that are too specific or there's some ideas that were shared that we can need a little time for reflection, like I said, we'll get to those as well via email. So everybody will be informed. If you see a question in the chat, excuse me, if you see a question in the Q&A that resonates with you, we will follow up with each and every one of these either today or through an email. So thank you for that. And then with that, I'm going to turn it over to Abby. And Abby is going to give us our general questions that were, or the questions that were given to us through the survey. And I think that's going to be answered by a number of our panelists. So Abby, I'm going to spotlight you.

Sweet. Sounds good. Thanks, Zach. I just want to give a thank you to everyone who was able to navigate to our project web page and who already submitted the survey. We did have that open prior to this learning session, so it's now closed. But we went ahead and basically compiled all the questions that were submitted on that form that you filled out. And just grouped like with like so we tried to hit as many as possible within the timeframe, we have available. So i'm just going to go ahead and dive into it will split the questions between Ben and Steve today so starting with Ben we have a question that says how will closures be communicated to the public in terms of channels methods and lead time for trail users.

Thanks, Abby. Yeah, we're going to have a lot of different methods to communicate these. We want to try to get across all different channels. As Zach mentioned, our project webpage is going to be a great place to... If you ever have a question on closures, check that project webpage out. I know we're going to try to push things out on Facebook, on Twitter, and then also with sandwich boards. At those trailheads, parking lots, and at our work zones, we're going to have a lot of signage that is geared towards anybody that maybe doesn't doesn't have social media or isn't checking the website, if they just walk up and see some signage, they should be able to get pointed in the right direction.

Awesome. Sounds good. Thanks, Ben. Will detours be provided? If not, will the speeds on the surrounding roads be adjusted?

Another question we've got a lot. We are not providing official detours for this project. A lot of the surrounding streets don't provide either ADA accessible or family-friendly routes. So we won't have official detours. We will, like you said, we're going to have a map that's going to be on our website that shows a lot of the surrounding side streets. If anybody wants to try... To go around, there's usually some areas to get there. As far as the question about adjusting speed limits on adjacent roads during construction, that's not something we currently have planned. I think we have initiated a conversation with some of our traffic group. I don't know if that's something we'll do, but I think we are going to look at that.

Sounds good. So this next question, you may have kind of hit in your presentation, but maybe if you just want to reiterate it again, the question is, why is the selected portion of trail being targeted in this phase of the project?

Yeah, I know this is the question that is asked a lot, so it's good to repeat it. We do know that there is sections of trail that are in bad shape that aren't going to be included in this project. We would love to be able to get all of the sections done with this. Unfortunately, we just don't have the budget. The sections we did choose are based on our requirement to provide this improvement project in Urban areas as well as rural areas. We have to have a mix. Also, we wanted to keep the project continuous. We didn't want to break up and do segments all along the 22 miles of trail in order to get the most bang for our buck. just be efficient. We're keeping the segments continuous, and we're also starting at the northern terminus of the trail. By starting there, we really can make this kind of a long-term efficient project where we move south. The next time we have funding available, we'll kind of pick up where we left off, and it can be one efficient project.

Awesome.

Hey, Abby, before you dive into the next one, will you kill the slideshow?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Then way everybody can see all your shiny faces.

Sounds good. Thanks. All right. So we've got a few more questions that were submitted in the survey before beforehand, and these are going to go to Steve. So the next question is, how is the county scheduling rolling closures to minimize the impact on trail users? This is in regard to the timing of construction work, how long of closures will go on and which days the closures will take place?

Yeah, so like I talked about earlier, we weighed a lot of pros and cons and different scenarios on how the vehicles work. And Monday through Friday, dates time closure is what we landed on. And I think it's most likely going to be 8 to 5. I don't want to note completely to that yet until we actually put in the contract and we go out to build it. That's kind of what we were looking at. So yeah, every segment open on the weekends, every segment open in the evenings as well. So everyone will have a chance to use it during a certain time during the week. Okay.

And then I'll just skip over the one question, because I think you definitely covered that, Steve, in your portion of the presentation about why the stretches of the trail need to be closed. You kind of hit on the safety of having people on the trail next to working equipment. So the very last question that we've pulled from the surveys is, when will the affected stretch closures be released and communicated with the public?

Yeah, so I think the way that we'll probably do this is once we actually have a contract signed and I sit down and do a pre-construction meeting with the contractor, I'll get kind of an overall general schedule and we can communicate that out for now. But I do want people to keep in mind that you know, it's the fall through the spring that we're talking about doing this. So the initial schedule that we may get put up is, you know, going to change probably quite a bit due to rain and other things like that that would impact us from paving. But like I talked about earlier, for each individual segment, you know, a few days in advance we'll be posting a sign saying there's going to be closures coming up soon, Monday through Friday in these days. And then same thing on the website. I don't want to speak for comms too much, but I think we're going to put all those on the website too.

Yeah, the web page is going to have the most up-to-date information in terms of what's closed when.

Yeah, so I think what's really important for everybody on here and then also for your friends that maybe use the trail and they're not going to be here If they're really interested in that and want to be following that, if you subscribe to the email updates and the project page, you're going to get all that info as soon as it's up on the page in advance. So leave those your tickets please.

Sounds good. And I'll pass it back to you, Zach.

Awesome. Well, we've got some questions that have come up in the chat. And so I'll direct them your way, Steve and Ben. We may not have the answers to all of these. And if we don't, like I said, we can follow up with emails. So let me grab one here. So from Ian, and again, thank you all who have put in a question. Feel free to put some more in. And again, if you can't get to them all, we'll answer. The question is, will walkers and cyclists be able to use the shoulders to get around work areas during the day?

No. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to allow everybody access, but I just don't feel safe with rollers and excavators swinging around and that kind of stuff with people next to the equipment while they're working.

Makes sense. A high risk. One from Harriet here says, I'm sure you are aware of all the uneven sections on the trail south of Fir Tree. Between Fir Tree and Monarch, those areas really need resurfacing as there's a lot of bumps. Is that outside of the scope that we're looking at right now?

That is outside of the scope. And we are aware of that. I wish we had a little bit more money to be able to extend this a little farther. But we will hopefully get some more grant funding, find some funding for this so that we can get down to that section.

And the goal is to eventually have the whole thing repaved and smoothed out when we have the funding.

That's right. We don't have the funding allocated right now for the next phase, which will be phase two. But we're looking for opportunities to find that either via grant or other sources so that we can continue this and keep going all the way down south.

Nice. Karen's got a few questions. One of them is, will PSE have requirements for keeping the trail open overnight and weekends, kind of similar to what we're doing? when PSC does their work?

Yeah, that's a good question. And I'm not sure on the answer on that one. I'd have to double check. We could probably answer that one via email or on the website. I know we will be coordinating with them. I haven't seen their latest construction schedule and plan. But that's something we can answer. Just not right now.

Okay. Something we maybe can lean on them a little bit with. Yeah. All right. Question from Bracey asking if the slides will be posted from today. I will be posting the video. So when I have that link, I'll email and it'll have all the accompanying slides posted. um another question in here uh from matthew thank you matthew uh will the time for opening and closing be consistent i'm thinking you know if we're once we shoot once we know our scope once we know our days are we aiming to do the kind of the same eight to five or whatever we come with consistently yeah yeah we are we are going to shoot for that and try our hardest to do it i

You know, there might be some things that come up where there's a reason that we need to extend it, like the 530 or something, but I really don't want to do that because that's not what we've communicated out. But just knowing the nature of construction, I don't want to 100% say, like, during the whole 10 miles, there will never be a situation where it might make sense to maybe go outside those hours a little bit, but we will try our best.

But the aim is to keep it as consistent as possible. And if there's something that comes up, Steve's going to let us know in communications, and we're going to get that out as soon as possible as well. Question in here about centerline striping. Will it be done along the trail or only in some locations? Or do we have plans to do it at all?

So we don't have plans or centerline striping in any location except for at road crossings where we have bollards. And we'll have some striping there really to delineate where those bollards are at. We don't want any cyclists or anybody walking to run into those. But we will not have centerline striping at the other sections of the trail.

OK. Will, at any point, will the bridge over I-5 be closed?

I'm trying to think now.

I don't think so, because I don't think, Ben, that we're actually doing anything in between the I-5 bridge and the Mark Hoy bridge. Don't think we're touching that piece.

I think you're right. I think we are ending at the bridge approaches. I don't think the bridge itself, it may be closed like up to one side of the bridge. I think we probably could try to work to make sure that we maintain that access across I-5, except for maybe a short, real short time period where we have to work right up to the approach of that bridge.

Okay. A question from Jim Toomey. For south of Yelm Highway, the portion of the trail, could some consideration be given to painting or marking bad sections of the trail, specifically roots that are coming into the asphalt?

So at this point, we don't have any plan to do anything south of Yelm Highway. I know currently we're still hoping we can actually even get to Yelm Highway with our funding. With the funding we have, we know we can get down to 14th. And we really hope that we get enough good construction bids, that the bidding climate is good enough to get those two additional sections down to Yelm Highway. But we're really stretching our dollars significantly. As much as we can. And I don't think we don't have any plan to do anything south of Yelm Highway with this project.

Okay. Maybe something for us to consider at Public Works, too. Like, as we have trails, are we, you know, is there a time that we might go and mark? So, yeah, thanks, Jim. We'll take that into consideration. Let's see, another one. Is any work planned – this is Jim Cahill. Thank you, Jim. Is there any work planned on the creosote bridges in the additive alternate one? I'm not sure what that means. I'm hoping you guys do.

Yeah. So probably – there's the bridge over – what is it, 14th there – We don't have any work on the bridges, no. And there won't be any work to the bridges as part of this project either. This one is really focused on the pavement. The bridges themselves won't, we won't be touching the bridges themselves, the structures.

Let's see. Did the county use, I know you hit a little bit on how the areas were chosen and why, because of the grant funding needing to be both rural and urban. But the question from Karen was, did the county use a scoring system to choose where to start, knowing that there's different segments that are used more heavily than others?

We, you know, previously have we did a trail, an overall trail condition assessment where the entire trail was, you know, visually inspected and we did some scoring. And, you know, we did look at some of those scoring that we did with that that study, which was done, I think, two years ago when all the trails were looked at. So we looked at some of the scores from that assessment that played into the kind of where we started this trail or with this project. And then, like we said, the grant funding really dictated a lot of where we had to include and then the kind of the feasibility of how we phased the construction projects also played into starting up north.

Okay. Yeah. I'm looking to, there's a lot of questions, so I'm making sure we covered everything. There's some suggestions in here too that we'll take into consideration and talk about as a team. Having, keeping the bridges open as a priority. There's a suggestion of supplying Thurston bike maps at each closure. Let's see. And if I miss, again, if I miss your question because there's so many, you can retype it or we can also, we'll also follow up via email. So Matthew Landers has kind of a follow-up to our alternative routes. I know we're not going to issue any alternative routes because we don't want to put people on busy streets or horses on busy streets where there may or may not be safe passage of bike lane or sidewalks and things like that. um but uh matt or matthew excuse me we'll um be sure to let you know which sections are being closed so that you can plan appropriately for that um Let's see. Another one says, thanks, Karen, from Jim Kale again. The crossing at 37th seems to have a bit of trouble for visibility for drivers. Is there any way for us to indicate, knowing that maybe there'll be some more cyclists and walkers there? Or is there any way for us to combat that?

Yeah, that's not something I had thought of, but I think that's definitely, we can probably come up with something, some additional signage there, some temporary construction signs or something like that. We can definitely look into that.

Awesome. Some kudos, Keith. Thank you for doing a great job keeping the trail clean the last few years. Jim, well done, county, for a great usable trail system. And thank you all. This has been really incredible. This is the most folks I think we've ever had for a learning session. We really appreciate the input. There was a lot of folks that gave us wonderful feedback on the surveys as well. We want to keep your, I say yours is mine too. I live in Thurston. We want to keep our trails open, operable and great as often and as long as we can. So I'm, I'm excited for this project. I'm excited for it when it'll be done. I know Steve's excited and Ben's excited for when it'll be done. But yeah, again, if there's any other questions, you feel free to reach out to us. Let me put that it's a TCPW projects. Is that right, Ben?

That sounds right.

Well, I will send you the email with the email. So you'll have a follow up tomorrow. I guarantee that. Otherwise, you can call my office and bug me. But I'll follow up with email tomorrow for everybody. And you'll be able to, again, ask any additional questions. So with that, thank you again. Paul and Bracey, thank you for your kudos. And we're going to call it a night. And we'll post the recording and keep you updated as we go. It's going to be fun. It's going to be exciting. Before too long, it'll be done. Thank you all.

Thanks, everybody. Thank you.