Green River Valley A Key Regional Link In Distribution Of Goods
By: Mike Archbold
King County Journal
October 10, 2004
Original Article
Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis is on a mission with other suburban mayors to improve freight mobility in the Green River Valley.
``The Green River Valley is the economic engine of the region,'' he says without batting an eye.
And he has the facts to prove it.
* The valley including Kent, Renton, Auburn, Tukwila and parts of Sumner in Pierce County as well as Federal Way is the second-largest distribution hub on the West Coast.
* It is the fourth-largest distribution hub in the United States.
* The valley contains between 100 million and 130 million square feet of commercial warehouse and industrial space, the largest in the state, accounting for nearly 95 percent of such space in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, including Seattle.
* Within 10 miles of Auburn there are 200 trucking firms moving goods and freight throughout the region. Half of those are based in the valley.
* Eight north-south and 10 east-west freight trains pass through the valley daily. The number will grow.
* Projections indicate that the freight moving through the hub will continue to grow at least 5 percent to 6 percent each year.
Lewis will trot out those statistics and others that he has gathered from a variety of sources, including the Puget Sound Regional Council and the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, any time he can to make his case to regional, state and federal officials.
The statistics have surprised him and moved him and other valley mayors to action, he said.
``The ports of Seattle and Tacoma have known for the last 10 years (and longer) about the importance of the valley and we didn't,'' he said. The ports know the goods that come through their piers, either coming into the valley or going out, travel in and out of the valley by trucks and train.
The Green River Valley distributes goods not only locally but to cities as divergent as Salt Lake City, Chicago and Indianapolis, he said.
Said Michael Zachary, director of planning and logistics for the Port of Tacoma: ``They are very, very right and we were wondering what took them so long to figure it out.''
``They are realizing that the buzzword is freight mobility and they are starting to realize what that means and do something about it.''
`No line in the dirt'
Lewis has joined with the other mayors of other valley and suburban cities who have begun thinking of themselves as an important subregion to Seattle and promoting the need for continued transportation improvements to service the valley hub.
The effort goes beyond King County. Lewis said they need to tear down the county line between Pierce and King counties because the hub knows no border.
``There is no line in the dirt,'' he said.
The Green River Valley, he said, really extends from the Port of Seattle south in a crescent through the Green River Valley south into Sumner, Puyallup and Fife to the Port of Tacoma.
``As Kent Mayor Jim White has said, if Kent catches a cold, Auburn sneezes. That applies to Fife and Renton, too,'' Lewis said.
And it is time to start thinking about it that way in planning highway improvements, he said, a concept that he said has been difficult for the Washington State Department of Transportation to grasp.
During the last Legislative session, he noted, the state attempted to declassify State Route 167, also known as the Valley Freeway, as a highway of regional importance.
On the contrary, Lewis said it is the main spine of the valley distribution hub.
``We are just past the point that the only road worth improving is Interstate 5,'' he said. ``We are not at the point of agreeing on improving 167.''
Mayors share mission
Four Green River Valley mayors, along with the mayor of Bellevue, will make up a panel at meeting of the Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County Tuesday. The panel discussion is entitled ``5 Mayors, 1 Mission, Regionalism: the new Geography of Opportunity.''
They will bring a message that the Green River Valley is an important subregional part of the effort to promote Destination Seattle, an economic development initiative now under way.
``He is absolutely right,'' Mayor White said of Lewis, a local banker who has been mayor of Auburn the past three years.
White has long been a promoter of Kent in international trade. His trade trips in the past to mainland China and other Asian cities spawned criticism, but he recognized the importance of Seattle as a gateway port and Kent's potential to be part of it.
Vital to international trade
Today, roughly 35 percent of the jobs and 60 percent of the businesses in Kent are in international trade.
``This is a vital hub not only to this valley but it is vital to the entire state,'' he said. ``We are the most trade-involved state in the United States.''
That realization has already led to a partnership called FAST that Mayor White said has become a nationwide model. FAST is working to streamline the movement of freight through the Central Puget Sound area.
The partnership includes transportation agencies, ports, cities, economic development organizations, trucking, rail and business interests. It identified 15 projects from Everett to Tacoma: Seven are complete. More projects are in the pipeline.
In the Green River Valley, they include the South 277th Street that jumps over two railroad intersections and ties into SR-167; the Third Street project connecting Auburn to State Route 18 in Auburn; the railroad underpass project on South 180th Street in Tukwila. Those are completed.
More are in the works or in need for money.
So why should valley residents be concerned about projects to move freight faster?
The reasons are many, said Lewis: better traffic flow for everyone, highway safety, family wage jobs generated by the distribution hub, a larger commercial tax base as firms settle in the hub.
Ships to ports to trucks
Mick Shultz, a spokesman for the Port of Seattle, said the port's recent economic impact study indicated that the Seattle area's marine cargo business is responsible for 19,191 total jobs in the region. Wages and salaries are more than $1 billion.
``Everything you buy comes in trucks or ships,'' he said.
The Port of Tacoma estimates 28,400 family wage jobs in Pierce County and more than 102,000 jobs statewide are related to the port's activities.
Port of Tacoma's Zachary said that a recent study indicates trucks in the Green River Valley use one lane of traffic 100 percent of the time for eight to 10 hours per day. In the next five to 10 years they estimate that traffic will rise to 20 to 24 hours per day.
``That means, of course, you are gong to have nothing but trucks,'' he said.
The Nimitz Freeway in San Francisco is an example of what can happen, he said. Truck traffic between the east side of San Francisco Bay at Richmond and San Jose grew so thick that vehicle accidents began to rise.
``The real answer is getting more capacity, from building more lanes to congestion management system,'' he said.
The role of the mayors is to educate the public, he said.
``If I had another 5 cents (in gas taxes for transportation) to give to the state, where would I spend it?'' Zachary asked. ``You've got to spend it on freight mobility and congestion. It does support soccer moms who need to get to soccer fields; it does support safety; it does keep trucks seeking alternative routes out of neighborhoods.''
Mike Archbold can be reached at mike.archbold@kigncountyjournal.com or at 253-872-6647.
