Olympia 2045: Transportation
What’s happening?
Every 10 years, the City is required by State law to review and update its Comprehensive Plan. This update will look out to year 2045 to show, among other things, how the City will accommodate new population and employment growth. It is also an opportunity to make sure the Plan and Development Regulations meet current state requirements that may have changed since the last major update of the Plan.
Each chapter of the Comprehensive Plan will be updated individually, with its own public participation process and opportunities to provide feedback.
This page is for the Transportation chapter update. To learn more about the general update process or other chapters, visit our Comprehensive Plan Update home page.
What does the Transportation chapter address?
This chapter will address how we’ll keep people moving even as we experience population growth over the next 20 years. It will incorporate many of the changes and feedback we heard while creating the Transportation Master Plan, which was adopted in 2021. We anticipate that the current vision of “complete streets that move people, not just cars,” will continue to guide the overarching policy structure of the chapter.
What recent plans/work influence this update?
To help implement the 2014 Comprehensive Plan, Olympia created its first-ever Transportation Master Plan(External link), which was adopted in 2021. Where the Comprehensive Plan outlines a vision and broad policies, the Transportation Master Plan shows:
- What we need to build to make the Comprehensive Plan’s vision real, and
- How much of that we can afford to build in the next 20 years, assuming our funding levels remain about the same as they have in recent years.
Olympia is also part of the larger Thurston region. The Thurston Regional Planning Council (External link)oversees the Regional Transportation Plan, What Moves You(External link), which was last updated in 2020. This plan is consistent with Olympia’s current plans, and it will influence this update. We also review and share plans with neighboring jurisdictions to ensure that we are consistent with each other.
City Council study session draft (fourth draft)
The most recent draft of the chapter is the City Council study session draft, which the City Council reviewed on July 29, 2025. You can watch a recording of the study session on Legistar(External link).
This draft reflects changes requested by the City Council's Land Use and Environment Committee during its March 27, 2025 meeting. It also reflects changes requested by the Planning Commission, which are summarized in its comment letter listed below and discussed during its February 3, 2025 and February 24, 2025 meetings. You can watch recordings of all of these meetings on Legistar(External link).
Below are two versions of the latest draft: one shows tracked changes and one does not. We have also posted a list of the significant changes between this and the previous draft.
- Summary of significant changes to this draft
- City Council study session draft - clean
- City Council study session draft - tracked changes
Public hearing draft (third draft)
The third draft of the chapter was reviewed by the Planning Commission, which held a public hearing on it on February 3, 2025 and wrote a letter to the City Council. On March 27, 2025 the Land Use and Environment Committee of the City Council reviewed the chapter and the Planning Commission's recommendation. The LUEC voted to recommend the chapter with some changes to the full City Council. Those changes have been incorporated into the above draft.
What we heard about the second draft
During September and October 2024, we shared the second draft with some City advisory committees and the public. We appreciated the thoughtful feedback from everyone who took the time to share their thoughts. This is what we heard:
We used this feedback to help shape the public hearing draft, above.
What we heard about the first draft
From May - July 2024, we shared the first draft with some City advisory committees and the public. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts. We’ve compiled what we heard below:
We used this feedback to help shape the second draft of the chapter.
Stay informed!
Submit an email request(External link) to become a “party of record” for this update process.
You can also subscribe to our Planning & Development E-news group(External link) to get email updates about many planning and development projects in Olympia.