Crossing Closure Worries Businesses Owners Say Customers Rely On Diamond Crossing; City Of Ponderay Will Appeal Decision

The “commercial triangle” threatens to become a Bermuda Triangle for businesses in Ponderay.

Businesses in the triangle-shaped district worry that their customers could vanish next year after Union Pacific Railroad closes the crossing on Fontaine Drive.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission recently ordered the crossing closed after years of debate and protest by city officials and businesses.

The city of Ponderay decided this week to appeal the decision to the Idaho Supreme Court.

“We are just trying to protect all the people in that triangle who would suddenly have no ingress and egress,” Mayor James Hunt said.

Businesses such as IPS Feed Store on Fontaine Drive rely heavily on the crossing, known as the “Diamond Crossing.”

Although the crossing has been slated to close since 1986, IPS manager Lianne Samalik said the business first learned of the possibility last March.

Now, the utilities commission has ordered the crossing closed on Oct. 1, 2000, citing safety concerns.

According to the Idaho Transportation Department, vehicle traffic has increased from 60 trips per day in 1995 to 182 trips per day in 1999. Train traffic has also increased at the crossing.

“The access to this area is very limited,” Samalik said. “We’re trying our darnedest to get the railroad to wait until we have another access.”

She estimated that 70 to 80 percent of the feed store’s customers use the Diamond Crossing.

The Diamond Crossing is on the south end of Fontaine Drive, near where Fontaine intersects Highway 200. The next closest access to Highway 200 is a crossing on East Gate Drive, near the Bonner Mall.

Business owners complain that large trucks, recreational vehicles and trailers can’t use the new crossing because it’s too close to the highway, requiring them to park on the tracks while they wait for highway traffic to clear.

If the Diamond Crossing closes, Cenex Co-op general manager Ray Delay figures the Co-op could lose $2 million annually.

“Truckers will not come because it’s almost physically impossible to exit and get out of here,” Delay said. “If we lose the fueling business, then we lose other things. And that’s the part that’s scary.”

Union Pacific built the East Gate crossing in 1986 with the understanding that it then could shut down the Diamond Crossing.

Although the city of Ponderay initially agreed to the plan, it later balked and refused to ratify the agreement.

The Public Utilities Commission intervened and ruled that the old crossing could be closed if the railroad installed signals and barriers at the new crossing, and if Highway 200 was widened to allow for turn lanes at the intersection with East Gate Drive. In addition, the commission ruled that the north end of Fontaine Drive, which is now private, would have to be in public hands to ensure access to businesses on the south end of Fontaine.

The first two conditions have been met, but not the third. Furthermore, state plans to widen U.S. Highway 95 call for a traffic light at Bonner Mall Way and Highway 95. Because Fontaine Drive intersects Bonner Mall Way dangerously close to Highway 95, the plans call for closing that access to Fontaine Drive.

That would leave only one access to businesses on Fontaine Drive, which is Tibbetts Lane, off Highway 95.

The Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce is proposing a different location for the light on U.S. Highway 95 and the construction of a new access to the commercial triangle.

But those possibilities won’t help in the short term, Samalik said.

“That’s not going to happen until 2003, so we’re pretty well shut off for three years,” she said.