The Bainbridge Island City Council received a presentation about a future Kitsap Transit park-and-ride project at Day Road and Highway 305 at its Sept. 16 study session.

Steffani Lillie, KT service and capital development director, described some of the proposed goals of the project, including reducing traffic in the downtown Winslow core.

“This is a park-and-ride that is hopefully going to collect people before they get all the way down here to Winslow to catch the ferries to kind of help with the downtown traffic,” she said. “ The current site of Day Road is a makeshift park-and-ride. It’s a part of (Department of Transportation) right-of-way that people have turned into a park-and-ride of their own, and so we would like to formalize it, make it safer, and really just do it justice for what it is.”

KT is currently completing the design process, which is at 30% completion. KT is working on both design processes alongside planning efforts for the environmental review, which is estimated to be completed sometime in 2026. As of the Sept. 16 meeting, no completion date has yet been announced for the design work. Construction is expected to start in 2027 and will be financed by grant funding, per city documents.

City Council voted to authorize the city manager to bring forward at a future meeting a right-of-way vacation and dedication in support of the future park-and-ride. The existing park-and-ride site is owned by DOT, and KT intends to purchase the property from DOT, Kevin House, a project engineer, said.

The project is located primarily within city and state right-of-ways and will not be subject to a land use approval process, per city documents. DOT has a separate roundabout project planned at Day Road and Highway 305, but does not have sufficient funding to complete the project, council learned.

“The design of the park-and-ride lot will not preclude the construction of the roundabout in the future,” per city documents.

The Day Road park-and-ride has a capacity of 23 regular parking spaces, and KT has three park-and-ride locations on BI, in addition to the future Day Road project.