SPOKANE, Wash – Concerned over the future of funding for Spokane’s largest transportation project, the city council will vote Monday night to send a letter to state lawmakers, encouraging them not to pause funding for the North Spokane Corridor.
The project to connect Interstate 90 to Highway 2 has been in the works for decades and is scheduled to be completed by 2030.
However, funding issues in Olympia threaten to pause funding on the remaining phases of the project unless lawmakers find new sources of revenue.
The letter from the city council says further delays will be “catastrophic” for Spokane neighborhoods.
“In our Spokane neighborhoods of Hillyard, Bemiss, Chief Garry, Minnehaha, and East Central— communities historically challenged by economic hardship and underinvestment—the incomplete freeway literally hangs overhead, leaving valuable land idle, hindering critical investments including traffic and pedestrian safety and affordable housing opportunities,” the letter reads.
The council says the project, originally envisioned in the 1940s, is not only a regional priority, but a “statewide investment with far-reaching impacts on economic growth, neighborhood revitalization, freight mobility, and transportation safety.”
The council warns that further delays risk “compounding costs, eliminating jobs, and missing a critical opportunity to realize the full potential of this project for Spokane, Eastern Washington and for the statewide transportation network.”
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