Bypass is years away

As the state ramps up for an $8.5 million U.S. 95 improvement project, some residents are waiting for another route that could quickly shunt traffic around Coeur d’Alene, instead of through the city’s heavily used, stop-and-go, north-south corridor.

Post Falls resident C.J. Ricketson has been waiting for a Coeur d’Alene bypass for a decade.

That’s how long, he said, the Idaho Transportation Department has been considering such a project as it prepared for rapid growth in the greater Coeur d’Alene area.

The county’s population has climbed with blunt force regularity between 2006 and 2016, when almost 40,000 more people moved to Kootenai County, according to state records.

Ricketson, who lives in Hauser, has attended transportation department meetings and met with road planners, he said, to pitch what he calls practical ways to route north-south traffic around Coeur d’Alene from Interstate 90 across the Rathdrum Prairie to Highway 53.

“I’m looking at it out of practicality,” Ricketson said. “I’m not an engineer.”

As the Rathdrum Prairie gets chunked into developments, he fears time is running out.

“It was sorely needed a decade ago,” he said. “It’s more than sorely needed now.”

With more than 30,000 people traveling through Coeur d’Alene on U.S. 95 daily (projections are upward of 60,000 by 2038) and around 39,000 passing through the city on the north-south route every day in the peak months of summer, the department is looking for a release valve.

“There would never be enough funding to build our way out of congestion on current 95 so we are working on optimizing what we have,” ITD district engineer Damon Allen said in an email. “Future large-scale projects will eventually need to be talked about like the Huetter bypass …”

But ITD personnel know that for now, bypassing north-south traffic around Coeur d’Alene, using Huetter Road and crossing the Rathdrum Prairie to Highway 53 before joining U.S. 95, is economically un-doable.

Megan Sausser, public information officer for the state highway department, said a bypass is a good idea, but costly.

“The Huetter bypass has been considered for the last 10 to 15 years as our area developed,” Sausser said. “It would ease congestion in our area and improve safety.”

Unfortunately, she said, the pricetag is around $245 million.

“The bypass must also compete with other projects,” she said, including an expansion of I-90 and U.S. 95.

So far, the state has purchased no right of way for a bypass project, she said.

That concerns travelers like Ricketson, who sees the growth on the Prairie every time he comes to town.

“The (highway department) never seems to do things ahead of things here,” Ricketson said. “They’re always trying to catch up.”