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Three ITD projects make Idaho Business Review Top Projects list

Three Idaho projects were named to the Idaho Business Review’s 2016 Top Projects list in Transportation Sept. 22 in Boise. Pocatello’s South Valley Connector, a collaborative effort in southeast Idaho with ITD serving as the resident engineer on this City project, was rated at the top of the category.

The South Valley Connector project in Pocatello (pictured above) won two “Project of the Year” awards this spring and was selected as the regional winner and a People’s Choice finalist in the nationwide America’s Transportation Awards.

The award-winning project greatly enhances mobility in the Pocatello area and increases economic opportunity for small business and industry, and most importantly, saves lives by improving safety and reducing emergency-response times. The project creates a new connection to the south valley area of Pocatello.

The Meridian Road Interchange reconstruction, spanning Interstate 84 west of Boise (pictured right), was selected in third place on the list. ITD replaced the existing interchange with a Singe Point Urban Interchange (SPUI), and improved I-84 between Meridian and Five Mile roads, including widening the freeway to four lanes in each direction under the interchange. The $50.8 million work also added a third lane over the top on Meridian Road, and installed sidewalks and a bike lane.

The interchange rebuild has also won multiple awards, most recently an engineering achievement regional honor from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Work to replace the interchange, originally built in 1965, began in April 2014. The new interchange opened to traffic late in 2015.

A third project from ITD was an Honorable Mention selection by the voters. The North Fork Payette River Bridge (pictured left) included replacing the existing three-span bridge in Cascade with a new 250-foot-long, two-span, concrete girder structure. The project was accelerated and managed to minimize impacts to the summer travel season.

The projects were evaluated by 16 professionals and experts — executives, architects, planners and contractors.