Birch Bay voices concerns on Jackson Road bridge

Birch Bay community members asked designers of the new Jackson Road bridge to improve bike and pedestrian access, slow traffic and divert it toward Birch Bay Drive at its first virtual open house. They also said construction cannot interfere with Fourth of July celebrations.

Whatcom County Public Works hosted its first open house for the Jackson Road Bridge Replacement Project February 3 via Zoom. Birch Bay community members were encouraged to complete a 10-question survey prior to the meeting and voice their concerns, questions and preferences during the meeting.

“We want to make sure that everything that public works is doing is open and transparent,” said public works’ Roland Middleton in his introduction. “This is an opportunity for each one of you to talk about something as simple as a bridge, as it were. There are things that are options and, as I’ve mentioned before, we have to work on safety issues, but there are aesthetic issues and other things that public works doesn’t really have an opinion. The opinion of the community is what matters. And that’s what we’re here for.”

Some major concerns for community members included slowing traffic off Jackson Road, providing room for bikes and pedestrians to use the bridge or building a separate pedestrian bridge for those east of Terrell Creek to have access to the beach. Residents also wanted to discourage drivers from cutting through the neighborhoods on Wooldridge Drive by diverting drivers toward Birch Bay Drive.

Since construction will be done in the summer, many members were in consensus for construction to start after the Fourth of July. Community members also asked for the new bridge to be as nonintrusive as possible since the area has a “natural feel,” and some possible designs presented would “stick out like a sore thumb,” one community member said.

James Lee, bridge and hydraulics program manager for public works, said the Jackson Road bridge is in the top four of the county’s 162 bridges in terms of need for replacement. “It’s not the bridge that we would design today,” said Jessica Soward, principal at Sargent Engineers, Inc. and head of design for the project.

Soward said their goal for reconstruction is to minimize the impacts to the neighborhood and sensitive habitat areas. “Our project cannot worsen the flooding,” she said, adding that it probably won’t fix it either.

They would also like to improve the aesthetics and make it a clear span bridge, without support columns, so Terrell Creek flows freely beneath it, Soward said.

“Some of these goals are conflicting, and so that’s why we’re here, to really weight out what’s important to the community,” she said. “For instance, we would love to make the bridge very wide and have lots of bike lanes and sidewalks for everybody, but that increases the footprint of the bridge and that increases the impact to the neighborhood during construction and also to sensitive areas.”

Soward said that because the project requires in-water work to remove the current center support for the bridge and construct the foundation of the new bridge, construction will have to be done in the summer. The state department of fish and wildlife dictates when in-water work can be done, which is when fish aren’t in the water, and that, for Terrell Creek, is during the summer.

Soward estimated construction to take three to four months.

During the public comment portion, community members also asked for a separate project to build a sidewalk or a pedestrian area coming down the hill on Jackson Road. Many said during the summer there is a lot of unprotected foot traffic on the road.

Kulshan Services LLC representatives mediated the meeting, introducing speakers, taking questions and recording suggestions.

There will be an open house during the summer that is preceded by another online survey.

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