Ponderay highway rebuild is a disaster

It’s Nov. 14, a Thursday night, the end of the second day of the opening of the highway. I don’t know where to start with the problems created by this design.

First and foremost, how do you build a divided four-lane boulevard without any street lights to illuminate the numerous directional signs that must be read in order to navigate this maze safely? This would be funny if lives did not hang in the balance.

Which ITD engineer came up with this U-turn solution? (The Ponderay nightmare.) You have so many signs on the median, that you have signs blocking signs. Some breaks in the highway allow U-turns and some do not, totally confusing what’s legal and illegal. The signage is of no help. The radius of the U-turn is so tight that large trucks cannot use them safely, forcing them to use the two major intersections to access local businesses. I spoke to a few of them and they are appalled at this.

This rebuild was supposed to be safer, not more dangerous; more convenient, not less. This afternoon, lights at the intersections quit and turned into four-way stops, creating an unbelievably dangerous situation. You can’t turn them on without knowing they work.

The Ponderay Police will have a field day writing tickets. The lowering of the speed limit to 35 mph this winter, out to the church, assures the PPD of a large revenue stream because like all road revisions in Ponderay, PPD requires speed limits, too.

DAN MIMMACK

Sandpoint