A small town where the main drag is also a state highway poses what Oregon Department of Transportation planner Peter Russell calls "an interesting puzzle."

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Russell hosted an open house at Sisters City Hall Monday, October 27, to examine the pieces of that puzzle with Sisters area residents.

The sparsely-attended meeting was part of the preliminary planning for ODOT's Salem-to-Bend Corridor Strategy, a plan that seeks to find ways to efficiently move goods and services while preserving livability for those who live and work along the corridor.

Reconciling those needs is part of what Russell refers to as ODOT's perpetual balancing act.

That balancing act plays itself out visibly in Sisters, where traffic is often bottlenecked downtown, amid tourist pedestrians crossing streets and local residents attempting to maneuver around town on daily errands.

According to Russell, ODOT must look at a variety of options to deal with that situation.

A bypass would be a radical solution, he indicated, and the agency is bound to try intermediate steps before recommending one.

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Intermediate measures could include installing medians to restrict left turns, and removing on-street parking from the highway. But Russell emphasized that those measures would have to be tempered according to their impacts on the people of Sisters.

Russell acknowledged that a one-way couplet remains one of the things ODOT must consider, even though the Sisters community has soundly rejected the idea.

"It's something ODOT still reserves the right to look at," Russell said. "And we reserve the right to listen to the community say 'there's no way you're putting a couplet here.'"

Russell said a critical part of the corridor plan and Sisters' future Transportation System Plan is designing ways to encourage local traffic to use local roads and stay off the highway.

But Russell noted that a small town like Sisters doesn't offer a whole lot of parallel routes for local drivers to use.

It is possible, Russell said, that a cost benefit analysis would indicate that taking major measures to relieve Sisters' traffic congestion on a few really busy weekends wouldn't be cost effective. Planners could decide just to leave the status quo alone, though Russell believes that some mitigation will be recommended.

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Several citizens made suggestions for improving the highway east of Sisters. Comments focused on the left turn at Fryrear Road. Citizens noted that eastbound traffic is often forced onto the shoulder when someone stops to make a left turn. Citizens recommended widening the road and providing passing lanes in the area.

Widening the highway for such safety purposes is possible, Russell said, but a general widening of Highway 20 is not in the cards. Governor john Kitzhaber has declared that no funds are available for "modernization" of highways.

That means there won't be a four-lane superhighway over Santiam Pass, even if one were desired.

Russell assured the meeting participants that such a highway would not be built; environmental impacts would be too great.

"Even if we had the money, I don't think we'd do it," Russell said.

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The initial information-gathering stage of the corridor plan is expected to wrap up in June, 1998. The second phase will include designing system plans and defining specific improvement needs.