BELLINGHAM — A consultant will recommend a new system of measuring traffic that allows congestion to worsen while allowing development to continue, officials said.

City officials recently selected The Transpo Group consultants to develop a new way of measuring “concurrency,” a term that means ensuring streets will be able to handle traffic generated by new developments.

Currently, if traffic from a proposed project would push congestion above a certain threshold on specific streets, then the project must be scaled back or the streets’ capacity increased. The new system will allow more traffic without crossing that threshold.

A new measuring stick is necessary to accomplish the city’s goal of accommodating more new residents inside city limits, in mixed-use urban villages, city Transportation Planner Chris Comeau said. It’s especially important now that the City Council wants to accommodate more people inside existing boundaries than it planned two years ago, he said.

The City Council in early June voted to allow traffic to worsen on a stretch of Northwest Avenue. Any new developments in the area of Bakerview and Northwest roads adding to congestion there would have been blocked if the council hadn’t voted that way.

Some people disagree with developing a new system. Former City Council member Bob Ryan says Public Works shouldn’t just come up with new ways to measure traffic problems instead of fixing them. What’s needed, he said, are creative ways to reduce congestion.

City officials selected The Transpo Group, based in Kirkland, over two other bidders: Kirkland-based Mirai Transportation Planning and Engineering, and David Evans and Associates, which has an office in Bellingham. The Transpo Group developed the city’s current concurrency system, adopted in 2006. A concurrency system was required by state law, but Bellingham’s was created as a temporary system until a new one could be developed, Comeau said.

City officials chose The Transpo Group because the company has a good grasp of the city’s plan and has staffing to complete the project inhouse, Comeau said.

The exact amount of the contract will be settled on when the contract is signed within the next week or so, said Joan Cady, purchasing superintendent at Public Works.

Comeau estimated The Transpo Group would have a draft proposal ready for review by the city’s Planning Commission this summer and the City Council this fall.

“The goal is to have a new system in place and implemented by the beginning of next year,” he said.