Residents of Maplewood Drive — a sparsely traveled rural road before a slide forced the closure of Columbia Heights Road in march — are fed up with the traffic detouring their way.
The city has a solution, but it’s creating another problem.
Longview may shut down the uphill end of Maplewood Drive on Wednesday, restricting through traffic but forcing residents to find new routes to points farther up Columbia Heights Road, such as Cascade Middle and Columbia Heights elementary schools and the Hillcrest Store.
The road off Columbia Heights is already closed to through traffic, and detours are Laurel Road and Glenwood Drive/Virginia Way or Nevada Drive. But on sunny Thursday afternoon more cars were using Maplewood than could be explained by the number of houses there. And that was before the evening commute.
“It’s unfortunate we can’t get people to use alternate routes, but people want the fastest way between point A and point B,” City Manager Bob Gregory said.
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Maplewood Drive was never meant for such a high volume of traffic, Public Works Director Jeff Cameron said, and so closing off its upper intersection with Columbia Heights Road may be the best way to preserve the road, although at a burden to the residents.
“We are concerned that if we are several months away from reopening Columbia Heights, Maplewood is not designed for the level of traffic and would be pretty much destroyed,” he said.
On Monday, city leaders will get results of GeoTech’s drilling and be better able decide how to stabilize the slope between Maplewood and Columbia Heights Road. Maplewood residents were given notice of the plan to cut off their road at the uphill entrance, and the city will also consider their concerns.
Depending on the stability of the slide, Cameron said, it may be possible to reopen Columbia Heights Road to one lane of traffic, alternating passage with a traffic light. Still, some drivers may still use Maplewood to avoid delays if the upper end is not shut down, he said.
The slide has dragged the yard of a Maplewood Drive residence downward onto Columbia Heights Road, but so far there’s no slide damage to Columbia Heights Road itself.
As for reports that the slide has spread and other houses have been compromised, Cameron said that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“We will find out more (Monday). So far on the site visits and investigations we’ve looked at, we have no indication that the slide is affecting any other properties but the original one.”
View Columbia Heights Rd & Maplewood Dr in a larger map
Brooks Johnson covers Longview city government for The Daily News. Reach him at 360-577-7828 or bjohnson@tdn.com.
