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Federal Lands, Excellence winners, outdoor signs
and long-range transportation plans
to highlight next week’s board meeting

Access to federal lands, winners of the 2019 Excellence in Transportation Awards, review of nearly 1,200 outdoor signs statewide, and a long-range transportation forecast will be featured at the Dec. 12 Idaho Transportation Board meeting in Boise.

Federal Lands Access Program
The board will be asked to approve projects in the Federal Lands Access Program (FLAP).

FLAP was established to improve the transportation infrastructure owned and maintained by a number of federal agencies with land and natural resource management responsibilities. Funding is available for projects that provide access to, are adjacent to, or are located within federal lands with priority given to projects accessing high-use recreation sites or if they are considered federal economic generators.

Some of the new projects being added to FY21 or later include ID-55/Banks Lowman Road intersection study, Boise County; Riverside Road Improvement/Enhancement in Boundary County; Dent Bridge Road Safety Improvements in Clearwater County; replacement of the Bayhorse Bridge in Custer County; and Pine-Featherville Roadway rehabilitation in Elmore County.

Excellence in Transportation Awards
The annual Excellence in Transportation Awards will be presented. The winners of six project categories and three personnel categories will be announced, starting at 9:45 a.m. Winners represent several districts and divisions.

Annual Outdoor Advertising Report
The Outdoor Advertising Program monitors and controls advertising signs in areas adjacent to major roads in Idaho. Those functions include:
- maintaining an inventory of all outdoor advertising signs,
- issuing permits and identification tags for signs erected prior to the effective date of the state’s outdoor advertising control agreement, and
- removing signs not legally erected or maintained.

Seven of the eight new outdoor advertising sign applications were approved in federal FY19. The other application was denied. At the end of the fiscal year, there were 1,176 signs, with 18 illegal and 218 non-conforming signs throughout the state. District 3 has the most signs with 337 followed by districts 6 and 2 with 253 and 188, respectively.

2040 Long-Range Transportation Plan
In July, the board approved the draft 2040 Long-Range Transportation Plan. The document has been reviewed by the Federal Highway Administration. The federal agency has no objections to the Plan’s conformity with the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. The next step will be to publish the document as a final product.

The 2040 Long-Range Transportation Plan provides information, guidance, and recommendations to help ITD and transportation professionals navigate transportation issues for the next 20 years. The plan addresses funding, growth, inflation, project selection, new and emerging technologies, and modal planning. Staff worked closely with the public and stakeholders during the update process, which also included a public-comment period.