Highway projects get funding

Several local highway projects were recently made the beneficiaries of the indefinite postponement of a new intersection at Lancaster Road and U.S. Highway 95.

Among them is a long-delayed project to build a crossing or interchange at Greensferry Road and Interstate 90 in Post Falls.

The Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization is recommending allocating that project and three others $3.15 million from the Lancaster Road project coffers.

Post Falls Mayor Clay Larkin said he’s working on a new plan for a lower-cost Interstate 90 crossing at Greensferry.

The city has been pushing for years to get a full interchange at that location, but at a cost of as much as $25 million, finding state funding is a long shot at best.

Larkin said he’s not yet prepared to discuss specifics about the new Greensferry plan, but hinted that it would not be an interchange. An overpass is another possibility.

The $1 million in federal funding transferred from the U.S. 95 and Lancaster Road project would help get that project going.

Also recommended was $1 million for right-of-way acquisition on Government Way between Hanley and Dalton, $217,000 for Huetter Road right of way and $933,000 for Hanley Avenue improvements between Government Way and Fourth Avenue.

Meanwhile, local transportation officials are struggling with how to improve traffic flow on U.S. 95 and surrounding cross streets.

With limited funding available for construction, the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization has instead been studying low-cost solutions involving traffic signal locations, signs, median closures and turning restrictions, said spokeswoman Staci Lehman.

“The options are all pretty small and would be implemented within five years,” Lehman said.

The work on those alternatives, stretching from I-90 to Highway 53, is being headed up by consultant David Evans and Associates.

DEA Project Manager Sean Hoisington said that the alternatives are being evaluated based on three different measures – how they impact cross-street delays, how they impact corridor delays and the number of miles vehicles will have to travel to reach their destinations.

Some alternatives might improve delays but force drivers to backtrack to get to various businesses along U.S. 95, Hoisington said.

Currently cross-street traffic is impaired by two signals that aren’t at the same half-mile spacing as U.S. 95’s other signalized intersections. Those intersections create a situation where keeping traffic moving along the highway forces cross-street traffic to wait for almost three minutes for a green light.

KMPO will host a public workshop on the alternatives late this month or in early September.

So far, reaction as been mixed, Hoisington said.

People want less traffic congestion, he said, but “of course, who wants to lose the left-turn access into their business?”