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Board tours District 1

The board’s tour in District 1 on Sept. 18 focused on Bonner County. That area has seen a number of major transportation improvements lately, including the award-winning US-95 Sand Creek Byway and US-2 Dover Bridge projects.

The day’s activities also included a visit to the Bonner County Airport in Sandpoint. In addition to viewing the runway reconstruction project currently under way, the Board also heard about some of the activities at the facility. The airport is growing. One of the things it is focusing on is making the facility an aerospace center, not only for businesses but they also have plans for an educational component.

Delegations
A number of local officials addressed the board at its business meeting in Coeur d’Alene on Sept. 19. The vast majority had a lot of praise for the department and the responsive District 1 staff. They appreciate the numerous projects that have been completed recently or are under way in northern Idaho. The most praise was for the Sand Creek Byway project, which was referred to as the “crown jewel”.

Although the officials extended a lot of appreciation to the department, they also expressed concerns with other transportation issues they would like addressed. Some of those include the poor turning radius at the US-2 and SH-57 intersection in Priest River, the bicycle/pedestrian path along US-95 north of Coeur d’Alene is in need of repair and does not extend north to Sandpoint, and US-95 in Bonners Ferry is not sufficient to address congestion and some intersections have limited visibility due to the angle at which the side streets intersect with the highway.

The Board also heard from the Idaho Transportation Coalition. It was established by Stuart Davis from the Association of Highway Districts and Wayne Hammon from the Associated General Contractors of Idaho to raise awareness of the need for long-term sustainable funding for Idaho’s transportation system. The Coalition’s presentation emphasized findings from the Governor’s Task Force on Modernizing Transportation Funding: the system is suffering from an aging infrastructure, growing demand, flat revenue, and inflation. There are 679 deficient state and local bridges in Idaho. The system has 395 bridges that were built before World War II.

The Coalition established subcommittees to look at specific revenue options and is conducting an economic impact study. After that work is done, the Coalition will meet with legislators, the governor’s office and other stakeholders. The emphasis is on a grass roots effort to increase transportation revenue.

District 1 Report
District 1 reported on the project delivery performance measure. Eighteen of the initial 20 FY13 projects were delivered by the target date, plus two projects that were advanced to FY13. Its percentage of pavement in good condition was 83.7%, exceeding the goal of 82%; however, the districts’ 70% of bridges in good condition was below the goal of 80%.

Some of the business and operations initiatives were an adaptive signal project on US-95 in Coeur d’Alene that improved mobility and an LED light conversion project that is projected to save $77,000 annually, in addition to improving safety. A winter operations study is under way to determine the cost benefit of de-icers, the impact of using salt, and best practices to obtain information to establish maintenance service levels.