In the name of safety

Sometimes it appears that the naming of streets is an exercise in creativity. Right here in Kootenai County, for example, we have OK Corral Road, Hat Trick Lane, Cattle Drive, Kicking Horse Lane, Easy Street and Wisteria Lane.

But wait. There are rules about such things - rules that are currently spelled out in County Ordinance 301.

Wednesday morning, the Kootenai County Commission met to solicit input on revising some of these rules and ultimately folding them into the proposed Unified Land Use Code. Current rules prohibit such things as the duplication of existing street names and the use of similar-sounding names. Many street names that "violate" the ordinance were long ago grandfathered in.

At issue here are Emergency Medical Service response times.

"The perfect scenario here would be more flexibility in naming roads, while simultaneously providing even faster response times for EMS," said Commissioner Dan Green. "This is another part of our land use regulations. Since we're doing a complete rewrite on that end, it's a great time to make a change in our naming rules - a great time to be amending them. The current ordinance definitely needs to be refined and can be improved upon."

According to County 911 Director Brad Coughenour, the more specific the street name, the less chance of a delay in EMS response times. Though phone technology - both landline and cell - is excellent at electronically nailing down locations for EMS dispatchers, it isn't 100 percent perfect. Landlines tend to be more accurate than cell phones and landlines are rapidly disappearing. The most reliable sources of location information are the 911 callers themselves. If, under stress, those callers give the operator a street name that sounds exactly like another street name, valuable response time can be lost.

"The clearer we can make the road name, the safer it is," Coughenour said.

It's something of a corn-maze world out there in street-naming jurisdiction. According to Dave Christiansen, County GIS Manager, the cities of Kootenai County are permitted to do their own addressing designations per Idaho code. "But most of them have adopted rules similar to ours," he said.

At Wednesday's meeting, Christiansen suggested the implementation of a three-member committee with representatives from the planning/zoning department, the GIS department and a County 911 representative. The purpose of this group would be to receive proposed road name suggestions and review them for compliance with the ULUC. "Our goal is to limit potential problems."

Another issue raised at the meeting was the siting of similar street names within a concentrated geographic area such as a subdivision. Ideas were discussed on ways to avoid this in the future.

"The real purpose of addressing this issue at this time - the first and foremost reason the responsibility is given to the commissioners - is for emergency response," Christiansen said. "Only secondarily is it for such things as package deliveries. Technology can't really solve the problem of duplicate road names. Technology will always have inherent errors."

"I think emergency response providers deal with issues the average citizen cannot imagine," Green said. "The consequences of our decisions regarding street naming can be life-threatening.