Knowing the danger to its citizens, by law the County has a duty to safeguard them, and can be liable to them if it does not.   

See Kessler, Highway Design Liability In Washington Our Right To Safe Roads, Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Coluccio (April 2010), http://www.stritmatter.com/_pdf/skwc-HighwayDesignLiability.pdf :

The law is clear: our street and highway departments have a “duty to provide reasonably safe roads and this duty includes the duty to safeguard against an inherently dangerous or misleading condition.”  This is “part of the overarching duty to provide reasonably safe roads for the people of this state to drive upon.” 

The County has been told -- by residents, businesses, drivers, bicyclers, through-hikers and even a Washington State Patrol Sergeant -- that SR 20 is terribly unsafe.  It has a duty to deal with this inherently dangerous condition.  It cannot wait until someone is injured or killed before it begins a planning process.   Waiting to fix this problem until my target date to ride the trail -- August 26, 2021 -- would be wrong.  To protect its citizens and to protect itself, the County must act now by including a DBET planning project on its TIP.