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Public Works - Street Systems Capital Projects

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1. How does the City of Federal Way plan for future transportation improvements projects?

The city has a long-range planning process it uses to identify safety, capacity and pavement preservation needs. The city uses a travel demand model to project future traffic demand and plan for street improvements to accommodate that traffic.

2. Who pays for transportation improvements projects?

The city funds street capacity and safety improvements through a combination of city funds, developer fees, and grants funding. The city is very active in procuring state and federal grants funding to help pay for transportation improvement projects. Historically, about half of safety and capacity improvement funding has come from state and federal competitive grants.

3. Why is the city spending money on construction projects when there is a budget shortfall?

The main reasons the city performs construction projects even when we are going through a budget shortfall are based on the division of funding within the city, grant funding for capital projects and requirements of city codes. The city’s budget is divided into a general fund and capital fund. There are certain funding sources that by law can only be spent on capital projects, such as Real Estate Excise Tax, the city’s allocation of gas tax and mitigation funds the city receives from development activities. As these funds can only be spent on capital projects, such as road construction, they cannot be used to shore up shortfalls in the General fund. The city has also been awarded grants for many of our capital projects. Grant funding is specified for a single use, such as a street construction project, as and as such can only be used for that project. With some projects receiving multiple grants, funding levels on projects can vary up to 100% of the construction cost, so some large projects have very little impact on the city’s budget. The city code also has a “Concurrency” requirement that is mandated by the state. This requires the city to maintain minimum traffic standards for congestions. Without investment in capital projects, such as street improvements and traffic signals, the city would not be able to maintain these mandated standards, and congestion would worsen in the city and would be in violation of city and state law.

4. Why are there projects occurring on different streets at the same time, which impact alternative routes through the city?

The city tries to coordinate work on city streets to avoid work on alternative routes, such as two east west arterial streets, as much as possible. The city has delayed construction on some Capital projects up to a year to avoid this situation. In some cases there are multiple projects taking place within the city that make this situation unavoidable. A part of the problem is that the construction window for paving is between April and October, and weather can shorten this window even further. This situation typically occurs between a capital project and a portion of the city overlay project. Capital project scheduling is usually done over a process that can take up to four years to design and construct, and with funding requirements, need to be completed within a specific timeframe. In the interim the city is also managing the pavement condition of all the city streets. When an arterial street requires overlay, it is least costly and least time consuming to perform this work as early as possible, so the street does not deteriorate further over time. If a capital project on one street has been scheduled and a parallel street requires overlay, the city has to weigh the impact to traffic against the cost to delay the overlay. As overlay projects on specific roads usually take much less time than a project that requires widening, the city will sometimes make the decision to perform the work to avoid higher future costs of delay.