The Puget Sound Regional Council created the Rural Town Centers and Corridors program in late 2003. This program recognizes and supports the region’s rural areas, which provide much of the natural resources, agriculture, open space and recreation, and contribute to the success of the region’s long-range growth, economic and transportation strategy, VISION 2040.

The importance of supporting rural centers and corridors is to achieve the following objectives:

• Provide financial incentives and assistance to bring together rural towns, counties and state rural highway corridor interests to jointly plan and assist in advancing implementation of much needed multimodal centers and corridors improvements. These improvements are to address safety, mobility, better centers access and circulation and related centers and/or corridors improvements to support transportation infrastructure needs and amenities.

• Provide technical communications and resources for innovative ideas and new approaches such as Context Sensitive Design/Solutions to coordinate planning and implementation for rural centers and corridors.

• Enable the region to update regional plan with rural town center development needs and highway corridor project improvement needs and assist in regional advocacy at state and federal levels for recognition and implementation of such needs.