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The Lewis County Board of Commissioners approved a list of priorities for state transportation funding at its weekly business meeting last Tuesday, May 20.
The state's transportation budget for the 2025-27 biennium was signed into law last week, approving a round of funding for county transportation projects.
The resolution passed by the county commissioners provides an idea of how the county plans to allocate $10.2 million. Roughly half will fund projects starting work this summer or early next year, including widening Scheuber Road North from Mt. Vista Road to Galvin Road and safety and traffic control improvements to parts of Harrison Avenue.
Other sums will go toward planning, design and acquiring land needed for future projects.
The construction this summer on Scheuber Road North is one of the first projects associated with the North Lewis County Industrial Access Plan to break ground. That plan is the culmination of years of funding from the Legislature and multiple studies conducted by the Washington State Department of Transportation analyzing how to improve traffic conditions in the Centralia area, especially near the Interstate 5 interchange, and how to separate industrial traffic from everyday commuter traffic.
The plan lays out possible improvements throughout Centralia, including to Harrison Avenue, Reynolds Avenue and Scheuber Road North along with other smaller improvements around the city.
The plan also calls for a new bridge to eventually be constructed over the Chehalis River and an interchange connecting 216th Avenue to I-5 between Centralia and the Grand Mound area.
All of these projects are identified by the state as ways to improve traffic conditions in the city, but they are not an obligation and have no priority order. The head of Lewis County Public Works, Geoff Soderquist, said that's what the county is doing now.
“About $10.2 million is supposed to be in this upcoming 25-27 state biennium,” Soderquist said. “And so we were just trying to program out how we intend to utilize that $10.2 million so when it comes to continuing to ask for the funds, we can clearly say, ‘here’s what we’ve done, here’s what we're doing and here’s what we need to continue moving forward with.’”
Scheuber Road North
The work on Scheuber will widen the entire road from Mt. Vista Road to Galvin Road. When it is finished, the route will have an added left hand turn lane in the middle of the road along with bike lanes on the outside.
Some of the $10.2 million is also dedicated to preparing for an expansion of Scheuber Road North, which would expand the road from where it stops now at Galvin Road all the way to Ives Road where it intersects with Harrison Avenue. If the county is able to acquire the land needed this summer, building the new route could start as early as summer 2026, according to Soderquist.
All the work expanding Scheuber Road North is the first step the city and the county are taking toward eventually connecting the north and south parts of the city west of I-5 via a new bridge across the Chehalis River. The proposed bridge would connect South Scheuber Road, which terminates near Providence Centralia Hospital on the southern bank, with Scheuber Road North on the opposite bank.
According to Soderquist, the new improvements wouldn’t just help with traffic but could also help improve transportation during flooding and provide better access to the hospital.
“We would then at that point have full north-south connectivity of roads on the west side of I-5 that could potentially be utilized during highwater events,” Soderquist said. “Where right now we completely rely on Jackson Highway and Kresky.”
Harrison Avenue
The improvements planned for Harrison Avenue are smaller in scale but potentially just as impactful. Almost a quarter of the money from the state will go to improving the turn lanes on the street where it intersects with Johnson Road and Belmont Avenue. Those two intersections control access to Safeway and the adjoining strip mall west of I-5.
In addition to turn lane improvements, five intersections near I-5, including the Johnson Road and Belmont Avenue intersections, will be installed with adaptive signals that can change their light sequence to traffic patterns on the road in order to expedite travelers and improve traffic conditions.
Money from this round of funding also goes to planning improvements to a large section of Harrison Avenue to the north as well as most of Reynolds Avenue. The corridor that could be improved in the future stretches from the north end of Harrison Avenue until it connects with Reynolds. It then follows Reynolds all the way to North Pearl Street on the east end of Centralia.
Improvements to the two streets will be similar to the work being done on Scheuber Road North. The streets will be widened to accommodate a center left-hand turn lane as well as bike lanes on both sides of the road. The improvements will also update the sidewalk and street lamps and make improvements to sewer and stormwater infrastructure.
While the current funding will not contribute to construction, Soderquist said it will help the county complete their ongoing planning effort.
“For the last three years, I think it was, we’ve been working on designing Harrison and Reynolds corridors for street widening, improved mobility and interactions with the railroad as part of the original study associated with this,” Soderquist said. “So we've been working on that and we’re at 60% design on Harrison/Reynolds. We are supposed to be at 90-100% design near the end of this year.”
