City, ITD meet to discuss streets plan

SANDPOINT — A special City Council meeting to discuss the approval of two long-sought agreements between the city and the Idaho Transportation Department that will transfer some Sandpoint streets owned by the state to city control.

If signed at the 5:30 p.m. meeting Wednesday at the Sandpoint Community Hall, the agreements will eventually shift eastbound U.S. Highway 2 from its current route through downtown Sandpoint along Pine Street, First Avenue and Cedar Street, over to Fifth Avenue, which will become a two-way street between Cedar and Pine streets.

All of those streets are currently only open to one-way traffic. Although traffic volumes will remain consistent, densities on the new two-way Fifth Avenue will increase as that same volume of traffic that was carried on two lanes is wedged into one lane, especially heading eastbound toward Ponderay on the highway at Pine Street and Fifth Avenue, according to ITD officials.

By terms of the agreement, ITD will first reconstruct Fifth Avenue between Cedar and Pine streets, adding traffic signals, channelization and other highway devices. When construction is complete, the three-block section will be opened to two-way highway traffic.

At that time the state will transfer ownership of Pine and Cedar streets and First Avenue, as well as Superior Street, to the city.

Per the city’s Downtown Streets Design Guide, those streets — and Church Street — will then be opened to two-way traffic, according to Public Works Director Kody Van Dyk.

The cost of making that happen will come from the Sandpoint Urban Renewal Agency, he said, who has money set aside for street reconstruction so long as existing city design standards are maintained.

“The money’s there for a typical rebuild,” Van Dyk said. “But it all depends on what the city council decides to do. They may change their minds on something and then the money wouldn’t be there. If they stay to standards, we have the money to do it.”

The highway reconfiguration is a compromise for both ITD and Sandpoint.

One of the two agreements involved in the transfer, the Cooperative Agreement, states clearly that at it’s opening, the new Fifth Avenue configuration won’t meet state design standards. Those standards, called Level of Service, define how well a project will move traffic. Like a report card, an LOS “A” is great for drivers, while an “F” is highly congested.

Right away the new highway configuration will operate at the next-to-lowest operating level, LOS “D,” during peak travel times

“They don’t know how long it will last at LOS D,” Van Dyk said of the project. “In my discussions with ITD it will last 10 years.”

Justin Wuest, staff engineer for ITD in Coeur d’Alene, and former Curve project lead, agreed.

“That’s what the modeling reflects,” he said.

That may not be the case for Sandpoint’s side streets that intersect with the new U.S. 2 route, however. Many will become highly congested immediately once highway traffic shifts from downtown to Fifth Avenue.

“As a traffic engineer I see (signalized side streets) having a great deal of delay,” ITD Traffic Engineer Ryan Hawkins said. “As soon as we flip the switch, some of the side streets will fall directly to LOS D.”

Maybe even an LOS “F,” he said.

“You will wait at least two cycles to make any through or left movements at signalized intersections,” Hawkins said of peak hour traffic. “The city imposed no threshold in terms of what is acceptable on their side streets.”

The city will have few alternatives for finding relief. The agreements note that maintaining the highway LOS has priority over congestion on Sandpoint streets, even if it means local traffic suffers. Signal timing is required to favor highway traffic.

Although Van Dyk said no specific modeling had been done for city streets, Hawkins said there was enough information to make conclusions, at least at the signalized intersections.

“We do have volumes on the side streets, and we have to a certain degree established what the LOS will be after the project,” he said. “In general it showed a lot of movements considered below the threshold ITD will design to.”

That threshold is LOS D. The decision to allow local traffic operations to fall below LOS D was a “decision made by the city,” he said.

“They made the decision that fit with their downtown transportation plan,” Hawkins said.

Any resulting local transportation grief may be relatively short-lived, however. By language in the agreement, when highway congestion falls below LOS D, a new highway capacity project to relieve traffic gridlock on the highway will be triggered automatically.

The agreement expressly identifies the former Curve project route along former railroad right of way that now belongs to ITD. But any future route may be an open question. The future project could also be built along a westside route, Van Dyk said.

Any new route will identified and chose when it becomes necessary to do so, Wuest said.

Such a project will ultimately involve another round of public involvement.

“When your state highway is the main street in a community, we want to be as transparent as possible, so citizens can make as informed a decision as possible,” Hawkins said.