Noll Road Association

Neighborhood connectivity is a critical concept to keep Poulsbo a small friendly town. Why? Without connectivity we have small clusters of exclusive communities that think of their own street before they think of the whole town.  Citizens think of just Ridgewood, Forest Rock Hills, Meredith Heights or Austerbruin rather than all of Poulsbo.  It becomes a contest of neighborhoods as they compete for city services rather than understanding that other neighborhoods should receive equal benefit. It is divisive for a community. We lose our friendliness. When people walk and drive through other neighborhoods, they understand and begin to know their neighbors. Neighborhoods must connect.

Neighborhood connectivity must occur in multiple ways and in multiple locations to ensure public safety. In our new neighborhoods houses are very close to one another. More people are in a smaller space.  We must be able to access people in the event of fire, earthquake and extended power outages.  Recently, the discussion has been concentrating on fire suppression (sprinklers) to control fire concerns. While this is helpful and important to each individual house, it does not address the overlying concern of getting emergency vehicles in or getting people out of a neighborhood in the event of an emergency if a neighborhood has just one entrance.

Our children must have safe ways to get to school. By not building multiple connections to neighborhoods, we force our children on to busy main arterials to wait for busses. Or they walk through people’s yards as the try to reach the safest, closest way to their school.  This is not acceptable.

As growth occurs we must be able to drive from one place to another. Cars must circulate through new neighborhoods to reach arterials. As the population increases, we must have more roads for more people.

How do we build neighborhood connectivity? We learn from history. When people first settled Poulsbo, the connections were trails. And as more people moved to our town, those trails grew to roads. This process can be repeated today.  As new neighborhoods are designed, they must include trail access between surrounding properties with easements large enough to build future roads. If a new neighborhood contains more than 50 houses, a secondary access for road traffic must be provided but that initial construction can start as an improved pathway that would allow emergency vehicles and pedestrians to walk to the closest arterial (neighborhood collector road).  As the traffic demand increases, and surrounding development occurs, this access would be improved to allow vehicle traffic.

The neighborhood of Ridgewood was very worried about access to Langaunet. This came about after the Noll Road Corridor Study recommended access from Langaunet to 23rd at a stub out at the east end of the Ridgewood Neighborhood. When this access was reviewed by the Public Works Committee it was decided that no access would be necessary for traffic circulation purposes. I spent one Sunday walking the neighborhood and talking to people about their concerns.  We discussed the increased traffic into a neighborhood with no sidewalks and yet, making sure that public safety concerns were addressed by the connection. We struck a compromise that can be repeated throughout Poulsbo. Build an improved pathway between Ridgewood and Languanet that would allow pedestrian and emergency vehicle access but not additional vehicle traffic. These pathways could be landscaped, retain trees, be additional green spaces just so long as they are constructed in a way to allow emergency vehicle access. I have had multiple conversations about access surrounding the new development (Crystal Glen) south of Meredith Heights. A similar compromise can be reached for Crystal Glen. Build improved pathways for pedestrians and emergency vehicles to Baywatch to the north. Keep people safe, give our kids safe ways to walk to school and as our community continues to grow, build the roads when traffic level of service demands those improvements.