Intersection Targeted For The Third Time In A Decade, Safety Board Urges Crossing Changes

A traffic safety board Wednesday urged city leaders to route traffic around an intersection where an 18-year-old woman died last month.

It’s the third time in a decade the committee of police officers, engineers, traffic experts and other citizens has recommended eliminating turns from steep, angled Lincoln Way onto Northwest Boulevard.

The City Council vetoed the measure in 1985 and again in 1992 because neighboring businesses and Fort Ground residents feared losing access to the boulevard, a main city throughway.

Meanwhile, the intersection has become one of the city’s most dangerous. Thirty-nine accidents have occurred there in the last four years.

So once again, the safety board has recommended blocking off Lincoln Way north of the boulevard. On the south side, Lincoln Way would be one-way heading south.

Northbound traffic from Milwaukee Avenue would enter Lincoln Way through D Street and Idaho Avenue. That will eliminate all dangerous turns, said City Engineer Gordon Dobler. The estimated cost is $30,000.

The committee repeated its recommendation Wednesday after hearing pleas to fix the crossing from a dozen friends of teenage soccer player Jennifer Stokes. The North Idaho College student died last month following an accident at the intersection.

“We’ll support you doing just about anything” to fix the problem, said Rolly Jurgens, dean of administration at NIC.

The traffic board had been scheduled for months to consider the changes, but Stokes death added a sense of urgency.

“We have revisited this issue over and over and over again and I’m not in favor of putting it off,” said Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Dave Scates, a committee member.

Stokes died March 26, three days after her car collided with a southbound delivery van as she pulled north onto the boulevard from Lincoln Way. She was headed from class at NIC to her job at Burger King.

“I stood by for three days while her remaining brain cells died,” said Dr. Earnest Fokes, who cared for Stokes after the accident. “This was an unnecessary death.”

State Farm insurance adjuster Neomi Vollenweider recalled questioning an accident witness who described Stokes’ car being thrown 150 feet during the collision.

“I hope and pray that’s an interview I’ll never have to perform again,” she said.

Nearly 70 percent of accidents at the intersection occur when drivers fail to yield while crossing Northwest or turning onto it, police said.

Options to correct the hazards are limited, city officials said, because road grades are steep and corners are sharp. Changing the intersection would require buying property or moving a Union Pacific railroad track.

Those solutions are timeconsuming, costly and not effective, Dobler said.

Traffic on Northwest Boulevard is so heavy the intersection would be dangerous without a signal, he said. A light would interrupt traffic flow on Northwest or back up traffic on Lincoln Way.

The committee’s solution leaves Mullan Road as the lone exit from the college. Future construction should make that route more convenient, officials said. The Idaho Transportation Department in July will begin a month-long $285,000 project to align lanes, add turn bays and retime street lights at Mullan Road and Northwest Boulevard.

“This is where we’d like it (NIC traffic) to go,” Dobler said.

Councilwoman Dixie Reid, a longtime supporter of the changes, pleaded with residents Wednesday to lobby city officials.

“We’ve tried twice before with the same proposal, but we need help getting this through the council,” said Reid, who also serves on the traffic board.

The city council will consider this latest request May 2.