URS, Sand Creek Byway receive WTS innovation award

An ITD project that brought more than a half-century of debate and planning to a resounding conclusion was selected to receive the Innovative Transportation Solutions Award for 2012.

URS will accept the honor for its engineering and consultation work on the U.S. 95 Sand Creek Byway project that was completed in June. Creating a U.S. 95 bypass around busy Sandpoint dated to the 1950s, but work didn’t begin until 2010. The complex project involved an unprecedented level of public and community involvement and environmental consideration.

The Treasure Valley chapter of Women in Transportation (WTS) will present the award to URS at its annual meeting and banquet Jan. 31 at the Riverside Hotel in Boise. The event begins at 6 p.m.

The District 1 project easily met the award criteria as “creative work of an outstanding and innovative transportation project or service that improves the quality of life for its users and the community.”

Selection of the byway was based on (excerpts from URS’s award application):

Describe an outstanding local project and specifically how the transportation element of the program has contributed to the success of the initiative.

The Boise Office of URS led the design engineering effort for the U.S. 95 Sand Creek Byway for the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD). U.S. 95 is the only north/south highway in the 100-mile corridor between western Montana and eastern Washington and the only highway that connects northern and southern Idaho. It is also the major connection between the United States and Canada in the region.

The old highway alignment entered Sandpoint and merged with U.S. 2 on a one-way grid system through the Central Business District. Over 18 percent of the highway traffic is heavy trucks, and congestion and delays were common throughout downtown Sandpoint, causing safety issues for motorists and pedestrians alike. The U.S. 95 Sand Creek Byway is a 2.1-mile segment of the larger U.S. 95 North/South Alternate Route.

The byway connects the cities of Sandpoint and Ponderay as an alternate route for U.S. 95 to reduce traffic through downtown Sandpoint. It has been a topic of local interest for more than 50 years and several alternatives have been discussed in the community. ITD faced a number of challenges based on the expectations of the community and involved regulatory agencies. To address these challenges, the URS-led design team engaged the public and agencies early in the process.

Identify how the project supports one or more key community values, such as improved accessibility to key services, employment, or other opportunities.

Input from the public as well as the cities led to context sensitive design (CSD) solutions that will provide economic benefits to the traveling public, tourists, residents, and local merchants. Freight trucks are no longer slowed through the city of Sandpoint while local residents and tourists find it much more pleasant to walk and shop downtown.

Concerns expressed by the community about the impact of a new highway along Sand Creek led ITD to expand the initial scope of the public involvement for the project to include the development of the Sand Creek Master Plan.

The draft plan was developed through six months of public participation and workshops that included input from local residents, citizen task forces, and a Master Plan Steering Committee to decide what features were the most important to be considered. URS facilitated two community wide public workshops to gather input on the Master Plan.

The development of the Sand Creek Master Plan and comments and suggestions from the public led to several context sensitive solutions or enhancements to the project that were not evaluated in the original Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) so the byway design team completed an Environmental Assessment (EA) to address those changes.

Describe what obstacles, if any, were overcome to provide this service or build this project.

Complex components of the project included providing interchanges at each end of the Byway, threading a three-lane roadway between two water bodies (Sand Creek and Lake Pend Oreille), preserving the historic Burlington Northern Santa Fe train depot, and accommodating a railroad that has plans for a future double track.

The URS project team designed the project to be constructed while minimizing environmental impacts on Sand Creek, operations impacts to the railroad, and delays to the traveling public. Existing traffic lanes were maintained for most of the construction, as was access to public beaches, pathways, and marinas in the area.

More than 800,000 cubic yards of soft soils were removed and almost 700,000 cubic yards of borrow/aggregate were installed. Many of the haul trucks had to use the existing U.S. 95 route to remove or deliver material, to minimize the impact on the downtown businesses and existing traffic.

More than 25,000 lineal feet of storm drain pipe and seven onsite drainage ponds were constructed as a system to collect and treat all storm water runoff before it is released to Sand Creek. More than 30 retaining walls of various designs were constructed with a final wall face area of 375,000 square feet. The four steel girder bridges required 72 girders weighing more than 4.5 million pounds to be fabricated and shipped via truck from Grand Junction, Colo. The abutments and pier foundations for these bridges were set on 43,500 lineal feet of steel shell pipe piling.

New pedestrian facilities were also designed and constructed along the east side of Sand Creek, connecting to the existing Cedar Street Bridge and existing pathways through the shoreline extension.

Explain how it has made a difference in the lives of its users.

The U.S. 95 Sand Creek Byway is worthy of recognition because of its unique and complex design situated between Sand Creek and Lake Pend Oreille. The project faced a number of challenges before it began, based on the expectations of the community and regulatory agencies. To address these challenges, ITD and the URS design team engaged the public and agencies early in the process with a strong and open public participation plan.

The Byway provides safe and efficient movement of goods along U.S. 95 while reducing congestion in downtown Sandpoint, protecting and enhancing the natural environment, improving pedestrian and bicycle operations, and returning the city’s downtown to the residents and businesses that live and work there.

Published 1-18-2013