Group Wants Highway 395 Renamed For Foley Tri-Cities Group Says Former Speaker Helped Get Money For Improvements

People driving between Ritzville and Pasco won’t take the newly improved U.S. Highway 395 if a group of highway advocates has its way.

Instead, they’ll travel the Thomas Foley Highway.

The Good Roads and Transportation Association in Tri-Cities wants to rename the highway in honor of the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Members credit his congressional clout for providing most of the money to widen the road and make other improvements.

“It would still be two lanes” without the help of the Spokane Democrat, said Jack Houston, a charter member and past president of the association.

The Spokane Good Roads Association voted unanimously to support the resolution, as did the transportation committee of the Greater Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce.

Houston hopes the Legislature will pass a resolution urging the state Transportation Commission to change the name.

Legislative action isn’t required, but the commission does want proof that a wide range of groups support the proposal, said state Transportation Secretary Sid Morrison.

“Hopefully this will be an ongoing tribute to Tom’s efforts,” said Morrison, a former Republican congressman.

Improving Highway 395 was a priority when Good Roads formed in 1964, Houston said. State officials managed to scrape up enough money to widen the road on a 32-mile stretch from Pasco to Connell in the 1980s.

By 1991, when work began on the remaining 50 miles from Connell to Ritzville, the highway was one of the state’s most dangerous. About one-third of the 4,000 vehicles that use it every day are trucks hauling everything from Columbia Basin potatoes to low-level nuclear waste.

With Foley’s encouragement, Congress allocated $54.5 million for the work. Another $10.4 million came from the National Highway System, while the state provided $17.9 million.

Crews last year finished widening the highway from two lanes to four. They’re still working on a new interchange where the highway meets Interstate 90. That job should be done this summer.

Pork-barrel spending was a key issue in 1994, when Foley lost his congressional seat to Republican George Nethercutt.

Critics skewered Foley for providing $10 million to build a library at Gonzaga University and $15 million for Spokane’s Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute. But few questioned the money spent on Highway 395.

Still, as Houston noted, the highway runs from Canada to Nevada and “there are places in Arizona and Nevada where 395 is just as bad as it is here.”

Those places, which weren’t home to the speaker of the House, didn’t get money for improvements.

, DataTimes