## Facts

- Motel owners’ property abutted a four-lane state highway and had roughly 500 feet of frontage for access.
- Many customers approached from the opposite direction and would make a left-hand turn across oncoming traffic to enter the motel.
- The State Highway Commission planned to install a raised concrete center-line curb (median) that would prevent left turns from the opposite lanes into the property.
- The owners alleged the State had begun planning to convert the highway segment into a permanent limited-access facility and that the median was an integral step in that plan.
- The owners alleged the median would substantially impair ingress and egress, severely damage the property, and reduce fair market value, and that the State refused to pay compensation or follow limited-access statutory procedures.

## Issues

1. Whether installation of a center-line median curb that blocks left-turn entry to abutting property constitutes a compensable taking or damaging of the right of access.
2. Whether the alleged project required compliance with Washington’s limited-access facilities statute (RCW 47.52), including procedures and compensation.

## Decision

- The trial court sustained a demurrer to the amended complaint; the owners declined to plead further; the action was dismissed with prejudice.
- The Washington Supreme Court affirmed.
- The court held the median curb was a traffic-control measure within the State’s police power and did not require compensation where reasonable access remained.
- The court held RCW 47.52 did not apply because the median curb, as alleged, did not establish a statutory limited-access facility.

## Legal Principles

- Abutting owners have a property right of access to an adjoining highway, but that right does not include a right to any particular traffic pattern or to direct entry from all directions.
- Reasonable traffic regulations adopted for safety and efficient movement (including medians and turn restrictions) are valid exercises of police power and are noncompensable even if they reduce convenience, customer volume, or property value.
- Compensation is generally required only when access is destroyed or so substantially impaired that reasonable ingress and egress no longer exist.
- A median curb restricting crossing movements does not, by itself, constitute creation of a limited-access facility under RCW 47.52 or trigger that statute’s procedures and compensation provisions.

## Conclusion

Because the owners alleged only loss of left-turn access from opposing lanes—while retaining reasonable access from the adjacent lanes—the State’s median curb was a noncompensable police-power regulation, and RCW 47.52 did not govern the project; dismissal on demurrer was affirmed.


Walker v. State, 295 P.2d 328 (Wash. 1956)