What does traffic congestion mean to you?

Spokane is no Seattle or Portland — and that’s a good thing a lot of the time. Especially when it comes to traffic.

Spokane has much lower traffic levels than the west side of the state or the Portland area, and it flows smoothly most of the time. So being from a city where the pace is a little slower, what does traffic congestion mean to you? And is congestion necessarily a bad thing or does it mean that our area, and economy, are growing?

The Spokane Regional Transportation Council (SRTC) has recently completed an update to the Congestion Management Process (CMP). The public is encouraged to determine if the process they came up with to manage congestion can be supported by the community. A public comment period on the CMP opened Oct. 28.

The CMP is an approach for managing congestion that provides up-to-date information on transportation system performance and assesses alternative strategies for congestion management (other than building new lanes and roads) that meet state and local needs. The CMP helps guide SRTC’s transportation investments as they pertain to congestion.

Several steps went into developing the document, including developing a process for identifying and measuring congestion and identifying transportation corridors to be monitored annually for performance.

Strategies to manage congestion were recommended for eight of those corridors, including U. S. Highway 2 through the West Plains area. All CMP corridors can be viewed on an interactive map on SRTC’s ArcGIS Online website at srtc.maps.arcgis.com.

For more on the Congestion Management Process and ways to reduce or manage congestion, the CMP can be viewed at http://www.srtc.org or by calling 509-343-6370.

The CMP is available for public review and comment from Tuesday, October 28 through 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Comments can be submitted by emailing [email protected] or mailing to SRTC at 221 W. 1st Ave., Suite 310, Spokane, WA 99201.