Route canal: Road work underway on Main, North Kootenai
KOOTENAI — A continuous ribbon of asphalt will connect from Highway 200 to Selle Road this fall.
The Bonner County commissioners are taking up a $569,547 asphalt bid when it convenes today during its regular business meeting.
A joint county, city and Independent Highway District project is underway to fill in gravel gaps on North Main Street and North Kootenai Road.
Bonner County ground up the stretch of gravel road on North Main, which will be lifted with gravel and paved by the highway district, according to Bonner County Road & Bridge Director Steve Klatt. The county, meanwhile, is hard surfacing 2.6 miles of road from the end of the city limits to Selle, Klatt said.
“It’s a route that people are using more and more. Particularly, we have seen a lot of people using that route now to connect to Colburn Culver to get to the solid waste site. It is an across-the-county connector,” he said.
In addition to increased use by private motorists Klatt added that commercial traffic also utilizes North Kootenai due to a nearby surface mine.
“It does serve a lot of people. It’s surprising how many people come across that,” he said.
The county has installed new culverts and widened North Kootenai. It also laid back a couple of road cuts with a hammer jack so the road could be widened, Klatt said.
“We’ve had it on our radar screen for the last three years as a target that we’d like to get to as a primary interest for asphalt,” said Klatt.
Road construction will continue through this month and into the next. Paving is slated for the first two weeks of September.
The Idaho Transportation Department, meanwhile, is planning a project to lengthen the center turn lane on Highway 200 and reduce the number of rear-end accidents on the busy stretch of highway.
The center turn lane will extend from McGhee Road in Kootenai to Kootenai Bay Road, although it is expected to reduce the number of access points from side streets, according to Idaho Transportation Department officials.
The city and the state are exploring options to make bicycle and pedestrian improvements on Railroad Avenue, which parallels the highway. However, this work fell outside the scope of the turn-lane project so funding has not been identified.
Construction on the turn lane is scheduled for 2024, according to ITD.
Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.
