[Vision2020] downtown: Moscow/Pullman Hwy. Mall?

[Mark Solomon]

Ted,

The last I heard, the Hawkins Companies proposed big box development 
was at the SEPA review stage in the Whitman Co. Planning Dept. A 
resubmitted SEPA application has been on their desk for a couple of 
months now. The Whitman Gazette reported that Hawkins was trying to 
work a water rights transfer with McKiernan Bros. Auto just north of 
Pullman on the Palouse Rd to supply water to the development. There 
are some very large problems with that approach but I won't get into 
that now.

I too noticed how nice it was to cross Washington, even with no 
traffic light to slow traffic, when it was only two lanes. I'm 
guessing that adding in the traffic signals changes the flow to a 
pulse, makes for a traffic queue at each signal and otherwise makes 
it appear like there's more vehicles on the road.

Mark

At 12:20 PM -0700 10/2/06, Ted Moffett wrote:
>
>Roger wrote:
>
>
>The question I pose is, why when we open more lanes of travel does it
>seem to breed more cars?  One would think having more lanes of travel
>would dilute the volume. The movie axiom seems to apply. "If you build
>it, they will come."
>
>Roger Hayes
>
>
>And as often happens on Vision2020, no one yet has addressed your 
>explicitly posed question.
>
>One way to view why bigger roads and highways encourage more traffic 
>is from Business 101.  Businesses look to find a spot to situate 
>where they expect they can grow, so they take a look at the 
>potential traffic flow, i.e. customer flow.  So when a road or 
>highway is expanded to allow more traffic, businesses will locate 
>there hoping to draw more customers, which, if the business 
>advertises successfully and/or has services and/or products the 
>public wants, is exactly what happens, expanding traffic.
>
>I'm not sure this explains an increase in traffic, if this has 
>happened, on the new Washington St. section, but perhaps the 
>increased speed of traffic is explained by the nicer smoother 
>surface encouraging a little more weight on the gas pedal.
>
>But who doubts for a moment that the proposed "mall" on the 
>Moscow/Pullman Hwy., on the Washington St. side, was planned with 
>the expectation that once the new expanded Moscow/Pullman Hwy. was 
>completed, the traffic and customer flow to the shopping center 
>would be much larger than it would have been with the old 
>Moscow/Pullman Hwy?
>
>I recall looking up the plans for this proposed mall, which was 
>discussed in some detail on Vision2020, on a website that I cannot 
>locate now...
>
>Does anyone know if the mall on the Washington St. side of the 
>Moscow/Pullman Hwy. is still going forward?
>
>Ted Moffett
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20061002/426b12ad/attachment.htm