Study funded for Highway 904

For the past 33 years, my wife and I have lived in a house near State Route 904, which connects Cheney to Interstate 90. When we bought our house in 1990, this highway had only a modest amount of traffic on it. Turning onto the highway was seldom dangerous.

That is no longer the case. SR-904 has become more congested and more dangerous. It’s easy to understand why.

Since 1990, Cheney’s population has grown from just over 8,200 to nearly 13,100. Spokane County’s population also has increased significantly during this period, from more than 361,000 to nearly 560,000.

As the populations of Cheney and Spokane County have grown over the past few decades, traffic congestion on SR-904 has increased significantly. If you need to turn left onto this highway, it can be a risky adventure because of the high number of fast-moving vehicles traveling on it.

If needed improvements are not made soon, congestion on this heavily used highway will continue to increase as the population in the Cheney area grows. It will be only a matter of time until more accidents and more traffic fatalities happen. This highway has become a public-safety concern.

That is why, as a member of the Senate Transportation Committee, I was able to work with the committee’s chair, Sen. Marko Liias, and the ranking Republican, Sen. Curtis King, to secure $200,000 in the Senate’s 2023-25 state transportation budget for a study on making improvements both along SR-904 and to the local network of connecting roads. Such improvements would include the Medical Lake/Four Lakes Road intersection, Four Lakes community access onto SR-904 and the network of frontage roads feeding into it. Once the study is completed, the state can work with the city of Cheney and Spokane County on designing and completing a project to address congestion and safety problems on this highway.

But the Senate transportation budget does more than address highway needs in the Cheney area, eastern Washington and the state overall. I’m pleased that it also would provide needed funding to rehabilitate the track and do bridge work to upgrade or maintain portions of the Palouse River and Coulee City Railroad, a portion of which parallels SR-904. At 297 miles, the PRCC rail system is the longest short-line freight-rail system in Washington. It spans five counties: Grant, Lincoln, Spokane, Adams and Whitman.

More than $65 million has been appropriated in the Senate budget for various projects to improve the PRCC, including that portion starting in Cheney and running west through Davenport to Coulee City in Grant County. The PRCC railroad is necessary to transport wheat and other grains from parts of eastern Washington to the main rail line that connects the northern U.S. to the Portland-Vancouver area.

The Senate operating budget provides funding for other important projects in eastern Washington, including the North-South Freeway in the Spokane area, a climbing-lane project on SR-26 near Colfax and a passing-lane project on U.S. 195 between Colfax and Spangle.

The Senate passed its version of the 2023-25 state operating budget on April 5 after the House passed its transportation spending plan on April 3. Transportation leaders from both chambers are having meetings to negotiate a final version of the budget. Once an agreement is reached, the compromise transportation budget plan will be brought to the House and Senate floors for votes before the Legislature’s regular session ends April 23.

I am optimistic that the final transportation budget will include the funding for the SR-904 study and Palouse River and Coulee City Railroad.

— Sen. Jeff Holy, R-Cheney, serves the 6th Legislative District. Holy is ranking Republican on the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee.