[Vision2020] Ring Road vs internal Hwy 8 bypass

[Nils Peterson]

Recently, several people have mentioned to me the idea of a Hwy 8 bypass of
downtown Moscow that would follow the abandoned rail lines.

This conversation has a certain urgency because the planning and securing of
the right of way to such a route needs to be done before the land gets
rezoned or otherwise redeveloped.

Napoleon imposed his vision of city planning on Paris, caring the grand
boulevards through neighborhoods, so I thought (smaller scale, but perhaps
no less humbly) that I'd try my hand at designing a new road along the
railroad right of way.

There are some things to like about this idea. I think one could clean up
the dangerous wye at 3rd St & Pullman Road.

It suggests how to bring the Paradise Path from east of 95 across to Line,
along the creek.

But, I had trouble with the Hwy 95 & 8 intersection at the south end of
downtown. And the more trouble I had, the more I found myself taking that
gargantuan intersection and making it worse. Or making something that felt
like freeway on-ramps.

And the more I looked at the (4 lane?) monster I was running down the old
railroad with a big light and intersection at 6th, the more I didn't like
the whole concept.

I started wanting to think about _alternative_ transportation on that
corridor, ways to forward a future thinking Moscow, rather than an
auto-thinking Moscow.

Which brought me back to the recent Ring Road conversations. I'm not sure
I'm ready for a ring, but a western bypass has more appeal than my new road
bi-secting downtown from UI.  My criteria for western by-pass is that gets
traffic out of downtown, and is planned so Palouse River Dr plugs in to help
traffic from Mt View and east on Hwy 8 get to Pullman.