U.S. 95: Partnerships guide growth
If you take U.S. 95 through Coeur d’Alene and Hayden, you undoubtedly have experienced the congestion during your drive every day.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise, as U.S. Census data shows Kootenai as the fastest growing county in the fastest growing state in the nation. Drivers have certainly experienced it on U.S. 95, where 365,000 more vehicles, or an increase of 3 percent, use the highway each year on average.
What everyone doesn’t know is the Idaho Transportation Department, along with the city of Coeur d’Alene and other community partners, has developed a collaborative plan to reduce congestion as our area continues to face extreme growth. The majority of that plan will be implemented next year, but planning began long before that.
A decade ago, ITD worked with several local stakeholders — including the city and law enforcement — to develop a plan to optimize the corridor and put solutions in place for the coming growth. While preparing the plan, we listened to stakeholders and the public. With your input, we developed several options to increase safety and improve mobility knowing there would not be enough funding to build our way out of congestion as the use of the corridor increased.
The group of stakeholders wanted to move toward full construction, but funds were not immediately available. To get the plan started, ITD began building some of these improvements with state funding. At the same time, the partners applied for a federal grant to get money to fully implement the master plan.
The group’s foresight was rewarded in October 2016 with a $5.1 million FASTLANE grant. Federal dollars will improve safety and mobility on U.S. 95 in Coeur d‘Alene for several years. In addition, the city of Coeur d’Alene has provided $672,300 toward the project, along with $2.6 million from ITD.
The total project — changing signal spacing, modifying turning movements at non-signalized intersections and adding more turn lanes — will result in $8.5 million in improvements next summer. This will greatly improve safety and mobility throughout the corridor for all drivers.
As the project now moves into the design process, the department will continue to work with the city of Coeur d‘Alene and other stakeholders to make sure improvements meet the needs of the community.
The Coeur d‘Alene Police Chief has asked for more opportunities to provide input on ways to reduce crashes in the corridor. Since January alone, his department has been included in three separate meetings. Based on his recommendation, we have programmed several signals on U.S. 95 to use simultaneous lefts in the evening when it is the most effective for the corridor.
ITD has also hired a consultant to study traffic flow and develop better timing plans until the FASTLANE project is finished. Those plans will hit the highway before Memorial Day.
We appreciate input from the chief and all of our stakeholders. It has been these partnerships that have made it possible to construct the existing improvements and acquire the funding that was needed to complete the long-term plan for the corridor.
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Damon Allen is District One Engineer for the Idaho Transportation Department.