ITD officials share Dist. 1 project details

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Representatives of the Idaho Transportation Department spoke to the Sandpoint Kiwanis on Dec. 18, sharing an update on ITD’s various projects — both ongoing and planned — in District 1, which includes the five northernmost counties of the state.

Dist. 1 ITD Public Information Officer Heather McDaniel walked members of the service organization through a plan to add a center turn lane at State Highway 200 from McGhee Road to Kootenai Street, as well as the department’s work with the city of Kootenai to incorporate a pedestrian trail on Railroad Avenue using grant dollars and leveraging a Strategic Initiatives Program local transportation grant to repave Railroad Avenue.

In addition, McDaniel touched on the relocation of the traffic signal on U.S. 2 from Church to Pine Street in the city of Sandpoint, along with the two-way realignment of Pine Street and elimination of truck through traffic.

The biggest item, however, is the ongoing reevaluation of U.S. 95 from Dufort Road to Lakeshore Drive in Sagle.

“Obviously that community through that area has changed quite a bit [since the previous design studies in the late-1990s and early-’00s] and so we’re going through and reevaluating the plan against the changes in the community and how best we can serve everybody through that area,” McDaniel said.

The preferred concept, which is undergoing environmental assessment, would be to widen U.S. 95 to a four-lane divided highway with frontage roads on either side throughout the Sagle corridor, build an interchange at Dufort, and construct two overpasses at Ivy Drive/Algoma Spur Road and Gun Club Road. Farther to the north, the concept includes building an interchange at Brisboys Road and an overpass at Bottle Bay Road.

Also included in the plans are considerations for maintaining bicycle and pedestrian pathways and potentially adding to the non-motorized infrastructure.

Most significant, McDaniel said, are the number and locations of the interchanges, which are intended to provide controlled access to the highway and function as on and off ramps.

“If you’ve ever driven through Athol, that’s an interchange,” she said.

Marvin Fenn, ITD engineering manager for North Idaho, said work on the Sagle corridor represents the next in a series of project phases to improve freeway access from Coeur d’Alene to the Long Bridge. The overall work has been broken up into five segments, with the most recent being from the Athol area to Granite Hill. 

The Long Bridge over Lake Pend Oreille, seen from Lakeshore Drive. Photo courtesy Idaho Transportation Department.

Fenn said that ITD will first need to secure funding beyond the department’s “meat and potatoes” sources — which are made up of mostly federal and state gas tax revenue — to utilize state Transportation, Expansion and Congestion Mitigation funds for bonding and pursue additional grants.

“Basically [we’re] trying to keep up with growth, mostly,” he said, later adding that those “meat and potatoes” sources “will never compete against the growth that’s going on.”

“We’re just getting ready. If we get that environmental document, we are almost shovel ready,” Fenn said.

In the meantime, the process of reevaluating the corridor will provide a clearer picture of the overall footprint of the work in Sagle, as well as how it might affect the land around the project. However, the best estimate for when that work could actually happen is seven years at the earliest, though Fenn said it could be upward of 15 years. 

“We’ve got such a big list of needs statewide,” he said.

Much nearer on the horizon is installing the center turn lane on Highway 200, which is coming in the summer of 2024. Likewise, the relocation of the signal at U.S. 2 from Church to Pine Street and realignment of Pine to two-way traffic is also forthcoming next summer (see Page 4). However, Fenn said those are the only projects ITD contemplates occurring in that area of U.S. 2 in Sandpoint.

“We blessed that, that’s OK with us. That’s all a city job,” he said. “Other than that, there’s no projects on the books to realign that curve — what you guys call ‘the Curve’ — using old railroad grade.”

Fenn had some additional comments on the so-called Curve project, which kicked up no small amount of community opposition earlier this year, when the city brought forward a concept to create a new intersection east of Boyer Avenue on U.S. 2 feeding a north-south connection between the highway and Fifth Avenue via a “couplet” on land formerly home to a railroad line.

“Last time, politically, we got shot down, so we wanted the city to have full support and actually try to at least politically … get everyone’s blessing,” he said, explaining that only when the city feels it is ready and congestion has become too great will it approach ITD about resurrecting the “Curve” realignment.

“We put that in as an expansion job two years ago and we just didn’t get a bunch of benefit-cost, only because the cost is so high and it dragged the numbers down. So that got parked,” Fenn added. “But I see one day at least using the railroad grade as one or two lanes, at least from Dub’s and not trying to do any fancy intersections at Dub’s or any monster improvements — that kind of was the emotional part of the last time we tried to do the big Curve job. So except for what the city’s doing, we don’t have a project in the program.”

In response to an audience question, Fenn also spoke about the future of the Long Bridge and its adjacent pedestrian bridge. ITD has put between $18 million and $20 million into the bridge in recent years — including wrapping the piers — adding a further 15 to 20 years of life to the span, which he said “is relatively young in the bridge world.”

However, the older bridge immediately to the east “is no more than a walking path” to the department, Fenn said, and, “If Bridge had their way, they’d pull that out tomorrow.”

As it is, that bridge has been shored up to withstand the pressure placed on it by non-motorized users, but, “We wouldn’t even allow a scooter on that bridge,” Fenn said.

It’s unlikely that Road and Bridge will undertake any major projects on the Long Bridge until the pedestrian span wears out, at which time “it’ll bring the department to some kind of action,” he added, suggesting that could come in the form of “adding another half a bridge to get some northbound lanes in there.”

For more information, visit itdprojects.idaho.gov.