“By early next year, Langley’s streets will give drivers a smoother ride and pedestrians safer places to walk.This month, the city received word that it will receive a $50,000 state grant to pay for street preservation measures on Third Street, Saratoga Avenue, and Cascade Avenue. Sections of those roads will receive 1-inch lifts of asphalt to keep them from falling apart. This week, one street that was too damaged to qualify for grant funding received early lift treatment. On Monday, a crew of contracted pavers were out on Sixth Street, laying a smooth coat of asphalt over the top of what was one of the roughest paved roads in the city. The city paid for the $7,800 job out of its own road funds.We had to do something there or we were going to lose that road, Langley Mayor Lloyd Furman said Friday.It is a good thing they did choose to fix Sixth Street, because it is attached to a two-year-old walkway that is to become part of a citywide walkway system this fall. Under a six-year transportation improvement program that received its first airing in a public hearing last week, the city will expand its pedestrian walkway system from the intersection of Al Anderson Drive and Sixth Street to the edge of town. Construction work on the walkway begins in mid-September and is expected to finish in January, when the walkway reaches the intersection of Brooks Hill Road and Coles Road.City public works director Rick Hill said the city has the $300,000 in funding for that project secured, as well as another $300,000 for a walkway project planned for Anthes Street. Engineers will begin to design that walkway in September.Also on the transportation plan are the following projects: a proposed Cascade Avenue walkway, downtown sidewalk improvements, additional pavement work on Sixth Street, a walkway and paving upgrades for Edgecliff Drive, a passenger ferry docking facility in the Small Boat Harbor, and a street overlay program. None of these projects have yet received funding.The city hopes all these projects will be funded by the state Department of Transportation. The total cost of the transportation improvement plan is estimated at $2.15 million. “