City's 'no build' option doesn't make sense

As the highway design plans for U.S. 2 have unfolded, taken shape and now unraveled, I began with a real interest and now find myself completely baffled by the city of Sandpoint’s unanimous support for a “no build” design solution to increasingly heavier traffic in the near future. As a former city councilman who helped search for some improvements to this highway connection in the late 1970s, I simply cannot fathom how we can somehow magically blend two-way truck traffic, considering the size of today’s trucks, with significant automobile traffic around an obsolete intersection and say this is a solution for the future.

When I attempt to visualize a fully loaded truck, trailer and pup meeting another fully loaded truck of similar size as they negotiate a 90-degree corner, I see a much larger intersection than what exists presently at Fifth and Pine. How could this possibly work? Is the city going to condemn the bank parking lot or much of it? Wasn’t it only a few years ago when the city absolutely demanded the bank had to construct the parking lot? I just cannot picture how this is going to be a solution.

I commend the city for having a vision of how it wants to be in the future. I would always hope that any vision of the future include traffic, large and small, motorized and non-motorized, flowing smoothly through Sandpoint.

STEVE KLATT

Sagle