With all of the building going on in our area, particularly in Maple Valley, traffic patterns are changing and sometimes in surprising ways. To adapt, I find myself increasingly relying on our car's navigation system to determine the best route, whether local or to more distant destinations. In my earlier post Traffic Headaches, I focused on how our routing has changed just to get to our exercise club in Maple Valley, and improve safety at the same time. What if we want to go to other places where it would seem we are more dependent on SR169 or perhaps Kent-Kangley?
To better understand Kent-Kangley centric routing options for us today, I chose to model making a visit to Trader Joe's market along 132nd Street/Kent-Kangley Road, just past Lake Meridian on the way to Kent and chose 3 different points of origin - our home at the north end of Lake Sawyer, Lawson Street in Black Diamond and traffic coming from Enumclaw, just to see how people are impacted differentially. First, here's our routing from home in the morning, recorded at 8:47 am.
Not surprisingly, we were routed the "back way" along Covington Sawyer Rd. to by-pass Covington as the fastest route. The routing from Lawson Street also offered no surprises, avoiding Kent-Kangley nearly all the way by taking Roberts Drive/Auburn Black Diamond Rd. This one was recorded 8:59 am.
I did find it surprising that the projected arrival times for all three routes were about the same. How about coming from Enumclaw at 9:11 am?
The preferred route according to Google? Take SR169 to Green Valley Road, follow Green Valley Road, head north on 278th and up the hill to connect with the Auburn Black Diamond Rd and then following the same route as coming from Lawson Street. Black Diamond is now also circumvented altogether. Interestingly, taking SR164 from Enumclaw down to Auburn and then up Hwy 18 taking another "back road" to Kent-Kangley and Trader Joe's was only 5 minutes slower despite being 3 miles longer. Going against traffic I guess.
What about returning in late afternoon? Here's the routing map returning to Enumclaw recorded at 3:37 pm.
No change in Enumclaw routing and only 2 minutes slower than earlier in the day, at least on this day and time.
No change in Lawson Street preferred routing either, recorded at 4:06 pm, though now the apparent incentive to avoid SR169 and Covington is even greater. The same is true for Judy and I, at least on this day, if returning home at 4:04 pm.
As one might expect, traffic routes that avoid Covington and Maple Valley, whether beginning from Enumclaw, Lawson Street or the north end of Lake Sawyer, appear to be consistently faster than the main thoroughfares. One might also expect that the incentives for avoiding routes through the cities of Covington and Maple Valley will only increase.
Caveat - I use these maps recorded on a single day at discrete times only to illustrate the importance of modeling current and future traffic flows and making improvements at key locations as close to concurrently as possible, including intersections outside of town, including SR169/288th and SR169/Green Valley Road in King County. This means working hand in hand with our neighbors, Covington, Maple Valley and King County, to prioritize and fund these improvements. We can't do it alone. And as individuals, I encourage us all to be involved with our City of Black Diamond to maintain this critical priority focus.
Thank you Google Maps and navigation tools, making our travel safer.