Residents Evaluate Potential Downtown Light Rail Station Areas

About 100 residents attended the Downtown Milwaukie Station Area Planning Workshop on March 19th at Milwaukie High School to learn guiding principles behind effective station areas and to select specific locations that would work best here in town.

After a technical presentation, meeting attendees broke into small groups to evaluate the individual station areas based on the criteria explained in the presentation: safety and security, connectivity to busses and pedestrian ways, development potential, traffic and environmental considerations, to name a few. The station areas on the table included the former Southgate site, Harrison, Monroe, and Washington Streets, Lake Road and Bluebird Avenue. Generally speaking, citizens thought stations at Southgate and at Washington would perform well, but there were no clear winners or losers.

Technical reviews of each station will be featured in the SDEIS, which Metro hopes to have published in May. Once published, a 45-day comment period will commence and a series of public meetings will be scheduled to take input.