ITD ekes out northbound lane on Fifth

SANDPOINT - Some breathing room has been built into a notorious choking point for Sandpoint traffic.

The Idaho Transportation Department managed to eke out another northbound traffic lane on Fifth Avenue north of Larch Street by adding some width on the west side of the route and reconfiguring road markings. The work was done at the request of the city in an attempt to improve traffic flow, said ITD spokeswoman Barbara Babic.

The new travel lane replaces a clog-prone merge zone for motorists accessing U.S. Highway 95 North and Highway 200.

"We'll see if it helps," Babic said.

Babic said a high water table in that area, combined with a soggy winter and spring, kept the project from being done earlier this summer.

"That ground there was just saturated," she said. "They had to get it to dry out some, so it took them longer than anticipated."

Although it might look as though the road was simply re-striped, Babic said the project could not have been done without minor widening on the west side of Fifth.

The merge zone has been a sore spot for some local motorists who criticized ITD for allowing the bottleneck to endure once Fifth was widened between Cedar and Larch about six years ago.

In other Panhandle highway news, a project to do a full-width asphalt overlay of U.S. 2 between Sandpoint and Dover is about a week to 10 days away from starting.

"It badly needs a new surface," Babic said.

The exact start date of the project and information about traffic management plans were not immediately available. Inquiries were referred to the resident engineer's office, which did not respond to a request for the information.

Plans to widen U.S. 2 between Dover and Sandpoint fell off the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program due to Idaho's transportation funding crisis. The widening project was moved into ITD's long-term planning program.

Motorists on U.S. 95 South can expect to encounter minor delays in the Garwood area, where a project to widen and re-pave the highway is under way. The speed limit in the construction zone has been lowered to 55 mph.

Crews will be working from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays until Nov. 15.