Most everyone who lived in North Kitsap eight years ago will certainly agree to one thing: times have changed. In 1998, there was no Olhava. No Olympic College. No impending Kingston High School. Viking Avenue hadn’t been widened. Bond Road’s intersection with Gunderson was still a crapshoot. There was no White Horse. And downtown Kingston was minus several business that have sprung up since.

All in all, North Kitsap and, more specifically, Kingston was a smaller community than it is today.

Why then is a plan that was shelved in 1998 being pulled down, dusted off and presented to residents of the Little City by the Sea?

Last week, an official from the Washington State Department of Transportation met with members of the Kingston Community Advisory Council, creaking the hinges on a modern antique of a plan to handle the ebb and flow of traffic caused by the routine arrival of ferries. Everyone seemed so excited that the long overdue discussion was taking place it seemed no one was willing to ask the question as to whether the very tentative, unfunded plan would work in modern Kingston.

At least things are in motion, which is more than can be said for vehicles stuck along State Route 104 several times a day. This said, the growing community of Kingston simply deserves better than a WSDOT plan that may or may not have worked eight years ago.

It deserves a fresh look, and if the defunct plan turns out to be the bran needed to flush the cars through the system quickly, so be it. Either way, discussions between WSDOT and Kingston residents should be slated in the near future.

But such sessions should be based on new data, and a plan that will definitely work for the town’s foreseeable future. If the three-lane system is a go when the numbers are crunched again, the state needs to get moving — not wait the better part of a decade again before re-presenting a plan to the public.

Meanwhile, Kingston’s traffic will be going nowhere fast.