Amazon is voluntarily paying a $178,640 traffic mitigation fee to Airway Heights to be used for improvements to the intersection of Hayford Road and U.S. Route 2, primarily for a second southbound left turn lane, according to city officials.
The fee is part of Amazon’s compliance with the State Environmental Policy Act, which requires developers know if their project will contribute to transportation problems in the area. The act also requires developers to find out what direct and indirect impacts their proposal will have on local traffic patterns.
Amazon performed a traffic study and found that early evening hours were peak traffic times they expect their vehicles to be on the road, mostly due to delivery vehicles, said Kevin Anderson, Airway Heights public works director.
“We’re very aware of the issue,” Anderson said. “We’ll be taking a decent amount of traffic from them.”
The city came out with a Transportation Circulation Plan in the spring outlining existing traffic conditions in Airway Heights and planning for the future based on current growth projections, but the plan did not include the impacts of a giant like Amazon moving into the neighborhood.
“(The plan) had no idea the Amazon thing was coming. It’s also not taking into account the rapid growth we’ve had very recently,” Anderson said.
Amazon may pay up to an additional $50,400 for improvements to the intersection of Hayford Road and McFarlane Road depending on the traffic mitigation fee adopted by the city, but that has yet to be determined, Anderson said.
Amazon will also be paying a traffic mitigation fee of $60,016 to the city of Spokane for improvements along U.S. Route 2, including the 12th Avenue connection between Deer Heights and Flint Road, the extension of Deer Heights Road to 21st Avenue and the 18th to 21st Avenue connection between Hazelwood Road and Flint Road.
Shannen Talbot can be reached at [email protected].
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