Roads plan unveiled

COEUR d’ALENE — Nearly $1.3 billion in local road projects are listed in the just-updated Kootenai County 2010-2035 Metropolitan Transportation Plan.

The only open house for comment on the plan will be on Tuesday from 5-7 p.m. at the Idaho Transportation Department, 600 W. Prairie Avenue.

“We’re required to do an update every four years, but decided that things have changed a lot in four years so we should do a major overhaul,” said Staci Lehman, spokeswoman for the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization, the regional transportation planning board. “It is a blueprint for the future of transportation infrastructure.”

The plan includes the current condition of the local road system, projected future conditions, lists projects local jurisdictions hope to construct over the next two decades and a look at how to pay for those projects.

The plan does not prioritize projects.

Short-term projects — expected to be constructed by 2015 — include, but are not limited to:

• Widening Government Way to five lanes between Dalton and Hanley avenues, $3.3 million;

• Widening shoulders, adding sidewalks and pathways on Hayden Avenue between Government Way and the east city limits, $1.5 million; and constructing a new three-lane connection to the proposed Ramsey Road connection (Reed Road between Warren K and Ramsey roads), $4.6 million.

Long-term projects to be constructed by 2030 include:

• Widening Interstate 90 to six lanes between Highway 41 and the Washington state line, $51.5 million;

• U.S. 95 Huetter bypass (new north-south freeway from I-90 to Highway 53) $400 million;

• Widening Greensferry to five lanes between 16th and Prairie avenues, $4 million; and

• Constructing a new three-lane rural major collector segment to Highway 53 (Main Street from Coeur d’Alene Street to Highway 53), no estimate available.

As for funding, Lehman said the plan is “fiscally constrained,” meaning that while projects included don’t necesarrily have to be funded already, there is the understanding that they can reasonably anticipate being funded by either 2015 or 2030.

She said just because they’re included in the plan doesn’t mean all of the projects will get built within 20 years.

“As we’ve seen, economies go down the tubes, projects get shifted and priorities change, so these lists could change when the (plan) is updated again in four years,” Lehman said.

The plan can be downloaded at www.kmpo.net. Hard copies can be picked up at 221 W. First Ave., Suite 310, Spokane.

Comments, which must be received by Nov. 7, can also be submitted to kmpo@kmpo.net or mailed to the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization, 221 W. First Ave., Suite 310, Spokane 99201.

KMPO will then consider any changes based on the comments for final approval.