The tale of ITD versus the city of Sandpoint

Back in the days of squabbling over the route of the bypass, the Idaho Transportation Department flatly declared that Sandpoint’s internal traffic problems were of no concern to the ITD.

Unfortunately, such bullheadedness should have been a matter of concern since their decisions about the bypass certainly contribute to our problems. The recent take-it-or-leave-it attitude about the curve at Boyer Avenue is part of their insistence that Highway 2 go through town instead of along the Great Northern tracks. And the traffic snarl caused by the wreck on Long Bridge could have been alleviated by the construction of a second bridge across the river as part of a West Side Bypass.

But part of that bullheadedness goes much farther back to the time when ITD proposed a bypass along the GN tracks. Too bad they didn’t stand their ground then. Instead, they caved in to the outcry generated by a real estate developer who owned property near the west side route and a retail store owner who planned to move his operation out of downtown Sandpoint to his property in Ponderay. Arguments were fabricated that if the downtown were not visible from the bypass, Sandpoint would become another Ritzville. Some comparison!

While the developer and the merchant may have had legitimate, although greedy, reasons for supporting the Sand Creek route, both became mayors of Sandpoint and used their official positions to enhance their financial interests. They, and perhaps some council members, failed to recuse themselves from deliberations on bypass issues; muzzled the planning director; kept the Planning Commission from their proper role in studying of the bypass; set up straw poles in which the west side route was identified as the Pine Street Loop, aided and abetted by the ITD which sent surveyors up there to sake out the bypass through the front yards of dwellings.

When the ITD failed to find even one planning firm to write an EIS favoring the Sand Creek route, they decided to do the dirty work themselves. One of the required public hearings on the Sand Creek route was held at Bonner Mall, but the large audience presented such embarrassing questions that ITD never made that mistake again. Instead, they staged several dog-and-pony shows where such questions could easily be ignored. In the end, a federal judge allowed construction to proceed long before delivering his opinion in the lawsuit.

The district engineer of the ITD stated that the Sand Creek Bypass would be obsolete the day it opened. When the communities of Sagle, Sandpoint, and Ponderay finally get tired of putting up with stinking trucks rumbling along their main streets, the demand will arise anew to build a bypass where the ITD wanted it in the first place. But don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, it might be a good idea to keep buildings away from a future west side bypass.

Joseph Henry Wythe

Sandpoint