King Co. to build wildlife crossing near dangerous Redmond road
REDMOND, Wash. -- Each year, there are 160 deaths nationwide caused by collisions with wildlife.
Novelty Hill Road outside of Redmond is a danger spot, but theoretically not for long.
The intersection of progress and solitude, the area has seen a ton of growth in the past couple years. But the area is still home to a variety of wildlife including deer, elk, coyotes and even cougars.
The problem is when area wildlife is on the move, the animals have to cross Novelty Hill Road and risk being hit by the vehicles that use the roadway.
To prevent collisions, King county will build a "wildlife crossing" this fall in the form of a 40-foot-wide overpass. The county says the move will protect people just as much animals.
"There is a high risk for people to get hurt at this location," said Rick Brater, project manager of King County Roads.
The project will use $5.8 million from a grant from the Federal Highway Administration, and King County will fund the remaining $300,000.
The county has high hopes for the wildlife crossing idea, which first hatched in Europe.
"In areas in Canada, it seems to be working very well, and there are parts of Wyoming and Nevada where it's working very well," Brater said.
Fences and trees will help funnel the wildlife to the crossing, and the hope is that nature will take its course after that.
The only other wildlife crossing in Washington state is near Cle Elum.
Novelty Hill Road outside of Redmond is a danger spot, but theoretically not for long.
The intersection of progress and solitude, the area has seen a ton of growth in the past couple years. But the area is still home to a variety of wildlife including deer, elk, coyotes and even cougars.
The problem is when area wildlife is on the move, the animals have to cross Novelty Hill Road and risk being hit by the vehicles that use the roadway.
To prevent collisions, King county will build a "wildlife crossing" this fall in the form of a 40-foot-wide overpass. The county says the move will protect people just as much animals.
"There is a high risk for people to get hurt at this location," said Rick Brater, project manager of King County Roads.
The project will use $5.8 million from a grant from the Federal Highway Administration, and King County will fund the remaining $300,000.
The county has high hopes for the wildlife crossing idea, which first hatched in Europe.
"In areas in Canada, it seems to be working very well, and there are parts of Wyoming and Nevada where it's working very well," Brater said.
Fences and trees will help funnel the wildlife to the crossing, and the hope is that nature will take its course after that.
The only other wildlife crossing in Washington state is near Cle Elum.
I live near Novelty and I don't recall an intersection of progress and solitude. How about going the extra mile and reporting the actual location of this thing in your article please? Seems like relevant information to me.
Anyhow, I like this wildlife overpass idea since we have essentially forced animals out of their natural habitat all over the country for as long as we have been here (and I personally have a soft heart when it comes to wildlife and their habitats) but this is a terrible waste of money. This project should have been done in the boom years [if at all] when we were throwing away money all over the place and not caring. At a time when the federal and state governments are running deficits and having problems paying for important things such as police officers and teachers, it seems wholly irresponsible to spend six million dollars on a problem that causes only 160 deaths per year across the entire country. In 2009 there were 4,092 pedestrian deaths attributed to traffic accidents in the United States (http://www.ghsa.org/html/publications/pdf/spotlights/spotlight_ped.pdf), so if we scale the figures accordingly we should be spending about 153 million dollars on dedicated pedestrian overpasses at any given 'danger spot'. How about we take this six million dollars and invest in money management counseling for all federal and state decision makers? Or we could pay down our deficit. Or we could hire more teachers to reduce class sizes. Or we could fund our park systems. All of these things should be higher priority than a wildlife overpass on a road where I have never seen a wildlife related accident in the 15 years that I have lived here.
In conclusion I believe that while there are worse ways to waste 6 million dollars, such as paying our elected officials, this is a tremendous waste of resources at a time when we should be scaling back less important spending and tackling much bigger problems.Â
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seems like a huge waste of our road money when I5 is crumbling before our eyes. why not build a barrier fence so the animals cannot cross the road? Our state has a budget deficit in a recession but the geniuses in OLY can find the cash to build a multi million dollar animal bridge? who makes these decisions because I highly doubt there are more important needs for that much money.
I hope other areas with high animal foot traffic will follow suit.Â