Road Standards

Thank you for your input. Our main goal with the road standards, in regard to existing public works policy, is to make clear what is required for development within SeaTac. 

These policies, of which PW Policy 11 is included, have been a long-standing requirement for development, but have not been posted or visible for anyone to see. Often times, projects would come in for permit not knowing about certain development requirements. By placing the policies within the standard, we hope there will be less confusion about some of the requirements moving forward. 

The Public Works department continues to evaluate all of its policies and requirements for fairness and effectiveness. PW Policy 11 being included in the road standards does make it more official, but it by no means makes it a permanent requirement. One of the benefits of adopting our own standard is being able to pivot when things aren’t working. If the standard isn’t resulting in beneficial outcomes for the city or its residents, it can be changed. That goes for anything in the standard. 

In the 10 years since this specific policy was first implemented, we have worked with the local utilities to enforce utility removal in a way that is reasonable while also protecting the City’s future interests. City staff understands removal of old utilities results in higher up-front construction costs and that utility purveyors may choose to pass this cost on to their customers. It is the City’s opinion that removal of old utilities is more cost effective than removing them during future capital improvement projects, where the cost will almost certainly be higher and result in construction delays. Our ROW currently being a graveyard of abandoned utilities, in our opinion, is not a good argument to keep making the problem worse. 

That being said, we do - and have granted - exceptions in certain instances where it can be demonstrated that future impacts would be minimal or there are other circumstances that would make removal infeasible. We will continue to work with utilities on a project-by-project basis to administer this policy fairly and consistently. 

Thank you for your input. A point of clarification before I answer: frontage improvement does not currently and will not apply for ADU or DADU units. The City cannot legally require frontage improvement for ADU/DADUs, as this is mandated by State law. The units that would trigger frontage improvements would be units that are considered Primary Units, which are greater than 1000SF and can be sold individually.

Enforcing frontage improvements in small segments is always tricky. Most jurisdictions mandate frontage to be built, when required, whether or not there are nearby pedestrian facilities. While it may seem silly to install 100-ft of brand new frontage on an otherwise unimproved roadway, there are not many good options that the City can impose address the impacts of development to the city ROW. The City can, in some instances, impose a fee in-lieu of frontage improvements. If we have a known improvement project in the works, we can take the fee and develop the ROW. However, State law requires jurisdictions to spend this money within 5 years, and it must be spent on the roadway adjacent to the property for which the fee was collected. This makes it difficult to accept a fee, as the city would end up returning the fee back to the developer in most cases, plus interest. There are only a few segments of roadway that will get improved in a 5 year span. This solution also is not intended to be a cost savings for the developer, in essence, trading a fee for constructed improvements.

It is frustrating to have old frontage improvements ripped up by new projects. In such instances, everyone’s time and money is wasted. To help mitigate this, we’ve adopted standard street sections for every roadway classification. These sections will likely go through slight modifications over time, but our hope is that what we are installing today will be close enough to future improvements that we can simply connect when the time comes.

Lastly, regarding ROW dedication, this is the most important aspect of frontage improvement. While most low density zoning is served by local roads that already have the necessary 60’ ROW width, many of our arterials to do not. By requiring ROW dedication, we can ensure housing and other permanent structures do not get built in the path of future roadway projects. This helps to avoid exorbitant acquisition costs and prevents displacement of residents. Even if Public Works were to stop frontage improvements entirely, ROW dedication would almost certainly continue.

I encourage you to make a public comment when this standard goes to Council for approval (watch for updates on this page). While frontage improvement enforcement policy is not in front of council for consideration, there are changes being made to the number and type of units required to provide frontage improvement.