A step toward more "walkable" cities?

King County planners are so eager to channel development into cities and towns that they're proposing to relax traffic-congestion standards in many areas.

Proposed changes to the county's Comprehensive Plan would allow homes, stores and offices to be built in existing commercial centers outside cities — even if traffic already is bad enough to prevent development.

In White Center, the plan would allow far more intense development that could encourage creation of a pedestrian corridor.

Those are among the ideas being floated by the Department of Development and Environmental Services (DDES) in the first major update of the land-use plan in four years. DDES and County Executive Ron Sims want to direct more growth into "walkable" cities and commercial centers instead of allowing it to sprawl across the landscape.

The public will have a chance to learn about the proposed plan and comment on it at a series of meetings starting Saturday in Redmond.

After officials hear from citizens and unincorporated-area councils, the plan will be revised and sent to the Metropolitan King County Council in March.

The proposal would give relief to landowners who have been unable to build in urban or rural commercial centers because traffic congestion exceeds limits that are intended to assure that public services are provided as areas are developed.

Service levels range from A, free-flowing, to F, severely congested. The "level of service" on rural roads could drop, under the proposal, from B to E without prohibiting development in Vashon, Snoqualmie Pass and Fall City, and from service level B to D in Cottage Lake, Maple Valley, Preston and Cumberland.

In the more numerous commercial centers in urban, unincorporated areas, road conditions could drop from the current limit, E, to the worst level, F.

DDES senior policy analyst Paul Reitenbach said the County Council added two parcels to the Cottage Lake commercial center in 2004 but that the owners haven't been able to build because of traffic.

The draft plan also would offer major incentives to developers to create a pedestrian-friendly link between the 3,500-home Greenbridge residential community, now under construction, with downtown White Center. To promote redevelopment of steep 98th Street, buildings' heights would almost double, to 65 feet, and residential density would increase from 18 units per acre to 48 units — and up to 72 units under certain conditions.

"My vision," said Karen Wolf, policy adviser to Sims, "is that someday in the future on Sunday morning you can wake up in Greenbridge and grab the dog and put the baby in the stroller, and go down 98th Street to downtown White Center and have breakfast and stop at an Asian grocery store on the way back home."

The Comprehensive Plan also would:

• Rezone 73 acres between Snoqualmie Ridge and Interstate 90 to allow Snoqualmie Valley Hospital to build a campus.

• Rezone the 156-acre, county-owned "doughnut hole" in Maple Valley to allow urban-scale development of eight homes per acre. The current rural zoning allows only one home per five acres.

• Keep the current low-density rural zoning of 272 acres along Jenkins Creek near Covington.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com

Information in this story, originally published on October 4, 2007 was corrected on October 10, 2007. A 272-acre area along Jenkins Creek near Covington would keep its low-density rural zoning under changes proposed to the King County Comprehensive Plan by the county Department of Development and Environmental Services. This story incorrectly said the department recommended urban zoning.