Sandpoint council OKs street agreements with ITD

SANDPOINT — Drivers in Sandpoint can look forward to major changes in the downtown area.

The City Council approved a resolution Wednesday at a special council meeting that paves the way for Mayor Carrie Logan to sign two agreements with the Idaho Transportation Department that will, if approved by state transportation officials,  transfer ownership of downtown streets to the city.

“This is a transformative decision,” Logan said after a role call vote passed the measure.

The resolution opens the way for two major changes in Sandpoint. The first is the reconfiguration of Fifth Avenue. After some minor reconstruction at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street, stripping, signal installation, signing and other work, the now one-way Fifth Avenue between Cedar and Pine will be opened to two-way traffic and become the new U.S. Highway 2 route through Sandpoint.

The highway currently runs through downtown Sandpoint along one-way city streets — Pine, First and Cedar. Once Fifth is re-designated as the state highway, the city’s plans are to switch those streets to two-way traffic as well.

Public Works Director Kody Van Dyk and Logan fielded last-minute questions from council members, which ranged from concerns about stormwater

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runoff, sidewalks, and congestion at First Avenue and Bridge Street, to how to handle delivery trucks on First Avenue.

Councilman Thomas Eddy asked Van Dyk if the streets would revert to city ownership, or to the Independent Highway District.

“Who truly owns the streets?” Eddy asked.

According to Van Dyk, “the first objective” of the state, based on conversations with the Attorney Generals office and the city attorney, would be to transfer ownership to the IHD. Control would then automatically transfer to the city by virtue of an existing memorandum of understanding between the two public entities. The city could also take ownership should the IHD refuse take them, Van Dyk said.

Councilman Bob Camp, the lone dissenting vote against the resolution, expressed concerns about predictions of congestion, referencing an previous Daily Bee article which quoted ITD officials – citing traffic modeling — who predicted city side streets would likely become congested “as soon as the switch is flipped” on the new Fifth Avenue highway configuration.

“ITD said basically that they give this street plan a failing grade as far as traffic flow; that it will not improve traffic,” Camp said.

Camp also noted he’d received feedback from constituents who had lived in the city during the 1980s, when, he said, two lane streets had been converted to one-way to aid traffic flow. Now those constituents were wondering why the city was reverting back to a two lane configuration. Camp asked for clarification from the public works director.

Van Dyk refuted the Daily Bee’s reporting, stating it was “a little misleading to put it politely.”

“Traffic forecasts that have been made for traffic in the downtown show that during peak hours, there are certain times that a couple of these intersections will have a level of service F,” Van Dyk said. “Meaning you may have to wait two cycles of the light to change.”

Level of Service “F” is defined by the Federal Highway Administration as “unacceptable congestion; stop-and-go; forced flow,” at peak hours.

Asked about city street modeling earlier this week, Van Dyk told the Daily Bee that no modeling had been done on city streets relative to the project.

Van Dyk went on to predict to the council that congestion would occur “maybe four to eight hours per year” based on traffic forecasts.

He then showed council members a graphic of Washington State Department of Transportation traffic forecasting that he said much of U.S. Highway 2 modeling was based upon. Three lines on the graph represented three separate forecast years. All predicted traffic increases on the highway. Those forecasts were superimposed over a line Van Dyk said represented an “actual trend.” That line showed traffic decreases.

“I think you can take from that that we’re not sure if it’s going to fail at level of service F (during) those four to eight hours,” he said.

Public testimony from the eight people in attendance at the meeting was generally in support of the project.

Eric Bush, representing the Sandpoint Center and Columbia Bank Community Plaza expressed  support for a “vibrant and robust downtown core,” and a desire to be involved in future project details to minimize any loss of parking or access to parking lots.

Once signed by the Logan, the two agreements will go to the Idaho Transportation Board for their approval. Once approved by all parties, work on the project will begin in 2016, according to Logan.