The in basket: Richard Brooks wonders when Salmonberry Road in South Kitsap will be repaved. It has needed resurfacing since 1965, he said, and gets patched about six times a year.

The out basket: Salmonberry is a peculiar looking road, in that the eastbound lane is in pretty good shape but the westbound lane is a mess. Most of those patch jobs Richard mentions must have been in that lane.

Doug Bear of Kitsap County Public works says it has a chip seal surface, which involves pouring gravel over hot oil and letting traffic compact it into a paved surface. That was last done in 1972.

The county’s biannual rating of Salmonberry had it at 55 on a scale of 100 in 2010. It will be rated again this year. If it has dropped below 49, it will get a new chip seal, Doug said.

The county plans to do a $100,000 study in 2013 of widening the lanes of Salmonberry and building sidewalks from Bethel Road to Jackson, but the actual work doesn’t appear on the county’s road plan, which goes out to 2017.

About $700,000 in improvements to Jackson Avenue’s intersection with Salmonberry is on the road plan for 2017.

The in basket: I encountered Jean Lenihan at the Willows retirement complex in East Bremerton recently, and she said she had been meaning to e-mail me a question for several years. She told me what was on her mind, and it’s a dandy that I had never been asked before or wondered about on my own.

Why, Jean asked, are the numbers of state highways radiating out from Highway 3 in Kitsap County not in sequential order? From Bremerton north, you come to Highway 304, then 303, 308 to Keyport and finally 305 to Bainbridge.

She didn’t even mention Highway 302 farther south just across the county line, or Highway 300 out to Belfair State Park, both of which intersect Highway 3 in reverse order.

The out basket: I recall when I was a kid here the renumbering of our local highways, and the fact that Highway 3 used to be Highway 21. Steve Bennett, traffic operations engineer for this region of state highways, says he has no idea what guided the choosing of numbers. “As these highways were renamed 50 years ago, I doubt there is anyone around here that would,” he said.

I don’t think Highway 303 was a state highway until well after  the county built it with federal Trident money in the 1970s. It became one about the time the state swapped a bunch of roads with local jurisdictions, notably taking over Sedgwick Road as Highway 160, creating Highway 166 from Gorst to Port Orchard, part of 160’s old route, and leaving the county with the remainder.

The state wouldn’t have had a natural choice when it took over 303, as it lay between 304 and 305.

About the best we can hope is that some old-timer recalls what the rationale was back in the original renumbering and lets us know.

The in basket: A Road Warrior column earlier this month about prospects for reconnecting Barney White Road’s two severed ends to create a link between the old and new Belfair highways generated a surprising amount of response and interest.

The column said there’s little chance of such a project in the foreseeable future, even though it would save miles of detouring when an .accident or weather closes one or the other of the highways.

Soon afterward Ken VanBuskirk, who serves on a Mason County transportation advisory committee, said my inquiry should have included his county. It has something along those lines in the works, and he said I should call County Engineer Brian Matthews.

Four readers assured me that Barney White Road does have a remaining stub that intersects West Belfair Valley Road. as Old Belfair Highway is known on the Kitsap side of the county line, despite my inability to find it on a map. I finally drove out and found it.

Finally Barbara Eklund of Belfair, daughter of a former Belfair postmaster,  called in with a history lesson. She said Barney White Road did indeed once run all the way between the two highways but that it was severed in the first half of the last century. Neither the large Olympic landfill nor the railroad tracks there today existed in those days, she said, and the road was dirt, as were most roads of that time and as the remainder on West Belfair Valley Road still is.

Her brother used to use Barney White Road to go watch planes at what now is Bremerton National Airport, she said.

I called  Brian Matthews for more information on what his office is working on.

The out basket: Brian told me that he has been instructed to study establishing a link between the two highways, but not at Barney White Road, which isn’t even in his county. Nor is providing a shorter detour route during highway closures the main motivation.

He is looking into pushing through Newkirk Road, which runs from Old Belfair Highway for half a mile as a paved county road and s little further as a private dirt road, so that it reaches Highway 3, known to some as New Belfair Highway. “I have this year to prepare a feasibility report with findings and recommendations to the county commissioners,” he said.

Such a new link would intersect Highway 3 slightly north of the railroad overpass, so it wouldn’t take that much distance off the detours when one of the highways closes.

What it would do, Brian said, is provide drivers wanting to go out North Shore Road or to some Old Belfair Highway location close to town, an alternative to adding themselves to the choking congestion in the heart of town.

It might reroute as much as 25 percent of that traffic, he said. Until the unfunded Belfair Bypass gets built, if it ever is, that would provide some relief to the backups Belfair drivers routinely face when traffic is heavy.

The in basket: Greaves Way, the link between Highway 303 and Old Frontier Road northwest of Silverdale. has inspired a couple of questions from Peter Wimmer of Silverdale.

One, he asked, “is there ever going to be ground maintenance on Greaves Way?”

And two, he said, when he  asked the Road Warrior column about the fancy lighting on that road a couple years ago, “the project engineer said that it was done (because) it was the ‘Gateway to Silverdale.’ Then at the Dec. 21 Central Kitsap Community Council meeting where Tina Nelson (senior project manager for the county), gave the brief on the Silverdale Way roundabout and Bucklin Hill Road bridge project, I asked about the lighting and she said that it was going to be the standard grey metal pole lighting.

“If the roundabout  is not another Silverdale Gateway (and yes, ‘Welcome to Silverdale’ is included in the design) then what is?  This again is showing how Greaves Way is another ‘build it and they will come’ waste of tax dollars. And how do we get a true Gateway to Silverdale with proper lighting?”

The out basket: Peter’s first question implies that the Greaves Way landscaping was planted and forgotten, but Don Schultz, county road superintendent , says that’s not the case.

“Between April and October,” he said, “the county spent almost $10,000 on vegetation management efforts along Greaves Way. This includes about 240 staff hours controlling vegetation along the roadway.”

Their focus was driver visibility and keeping brush growth out of the street. “It is not landscaping in the truest sense,” he said, “but rather managing the vegetation to ensure the travel lanes remain clear.”

Tina Nelson took the second question, and said, “There has been, and continues to be, discussion with the Central Kitsap Community Council (CKCC) about using the center of the roundabout for a ‘feature’ (a gateway in a sense) to welcome motorists to Silverdale. The decision was made to include minor work within the center (including the wall with the Welcome to Silverdale letters) in the current construction project, and work later on a ‘feature.’ The feature could include art, plants, something by the community, a competition, or other ideas being considered by the CKCC.

“The construction plan is to provide the required lighting that meets (state) standards for safety for the roundabout. The current plan specifies standard (state) light poles. This is county standard for projects if we can’t hang luminaries from existing power poles. The standard poles meet safety specifications, and allow us to use existing inventory parts for any maintenance required. This keeps maintenance costs lower.

“We listened to feedback provided at the December CKCC meeting. We are reviewing the possibility of installing light poles more decorative than the standard poles currently in the project design.

“We are reviewing pole options, initial cost of installation, time and cost for a redesign of the lighting system, and future maintenance costs. Decorative lighting could also be provided to the corridor at a later date in addition to the required lighting. This would be more directed towards pedestrians and create a place and ambiance.”

The in basket:  Gary Reed says, “I see the new traffic signals at the Bremerton end of the Manette bridge have yellow reflective tape or paint around the edge of the fixture. …I have been seeing that treatment more often around lately, and not just in Kitsap County.

“What is the purpose of the reflective tape or paint?” he asked. “I’m sure it must add many more dollars to the cost of the fixture.

“And why must we have two fixtures per lane? Surely technology has advanced to the point where two bulbs (LED’s maybe) can be used, with a circuit designed to hold one in reserve and trigger a small indicator on the outside of the fixture that one lamp needs replacing. If it is a law that requires the two fixtures per lane, seems it would be easy to allow a modern unit with the stroke of a pen.”

The out basket: I first saw the yellow edging at the Sedgwick interchange on Highway 16 a few years ago, and was told it was done to make the signal heads more visible in a power outage, to alert drivers to cross traffic and the need to treat it as an all-way stop. I was told then it was being used where power outages were most common.

Don Anders of the Olympic Region signal shop, says, “This edging started as a pilot project when they first went in several years ago.  They are now required on all new signal projects and also required in the 2009 Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices which WSDOT adopted recently.

“The cost is minimal for this product,” he said, “but I do have concerns with how it will hold up over time because we will have to replace as needed.”

Its basic reason is “for power outages at night so the vehicle displays can be seen when dark,” Don said.

“The dual display (of signal heads) for each major movement has been a federal requirement for many years,” he said, “and is to provide better visibility and extra safety if one lamp burns out.  I doubt that rule will change because in the new 2009 MUTCD more vehicle displays are now required than in the past.”

The in basket: Dave Dahlke and Katie Ruley has questions about the Tremont interchange on Highway 16 in Port Orchard.

Dave wonders what the arrow at the downhill end of the northbound Highway 16 off-ramp there is supposed to mean.

“I see left-  and right-turn arrows in center turn lanes,” he said. “I see left-turn arrows and right-turn arrows signifying what I believe to be only those turns allowed in other lanes. What  (is) the purpose of a straight-ahead white arrow on the pavement on the off-ramp from Highway 16 to Tremont? “Makes me wonder if any out-of-town drivers assume the only option is to drive straight ahead which puts them  back on Highway 16 via the on-ramp.”

Katie is perplexed by the position of the Yield sign that assigns right-of-way to left turners coming off Tremont to head toward Gorst on the freeway, over right turners using the same on-ramp.

“If I am waiting to turn left into oncoming traffic to enter the highway,” she said, “it would seem to me impossible that I would have the right of way, but yet people do! And now there is a yield sign? This makes no sense.”

The out basket: The white arrows on that off-ramp and many others, which I had never noticed until Dave asked, are designed to tell drivers what not to do, not what to do.

They are a visual cue to anyone who has turned from Tremont onto the off-ramp that they ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!! It hopes to keep them out of the high speed highway traffic.

You’ll also see them on the mainline of Highway 16 near Haven of Rest Cemetery in Gig Harbor and in Gorst in front of Navy City Metals. Both are near places where drivers have a way to get headed the wrong way on a divided highway.

As for the Yield sign, I told Katie that a right turner  certainly doesn’t have to yield to a car that is waiting for traffic to clear to begin the left turn. But when the two traffic flows actually conflict, right of way must be assigned to one or the other.

In this and similar cases, says Steve Bennett, traffic operations engineer for the Olympic Region of state highways, giving the left turner the right of way “is more safe for all involved.

“The right turner is in a protected spot and can safely wait for the left turner to pass by. The left turner, if he has already begun his turn, may be blocking a lane if forced to wait for the right turner. This could cause traffic on the through road to make  sudden stops or swerve to avoid hitting the blocking vehicle.”