Construction mistake causes traffic jam

SANDPOINT — Congestion on U.S. 95 near the Long Bridge caused some commuters to wait in traffic for 90 minutes on Thursday. The incident is expected to be a one-off situation, according to Idaho Transportation Department officials.

The traffic jam spanned beyond Sagle on the south end and beyond Ponderay on the north end. It also created problems in Sandpoint due to vehicles backing up the highway entrance ramps causing congestion in surrounding streets, including a portion of the downtown area.

The cause of the delay came from night-work construction that was unable to finish by their scheduled time of 5 a.m., according to information from Megan Jahns, a public information officer for the Idaho Transportation Department.

While night construction to repair bumps on Long Bridge has been happening for several weeks, last night’s work caused problems that bled over into the morning commute, Jahns said.

“Today was truly just a bad day for traffic. We’re taking a lot of actions to keep it from being a bad day tomorrow,” she added.

Construction crews are working on the project to reduce bumps in the pavement on Long Bridge. Construction crews grind the pavement surrounding the bumps, foam is placed, and then pavement is relaid overtop. Typically, work is done at night from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., but crews experienced complications on Thursday. The pavement was ground down too much, causing a pavement drop-off that exceeded three inches — the upper limit that is suitable for traffic.

Crews had to lay temporary pavement to account for the mistake, but the delay prevented them from clearing the highway before 5 a.m. leaving only one open lane of traffic on one of Bonner County’s most travelled roadways and the main route to access Sandpoint.

Long Bridge functions as the only way to access Sandpoint from the south. The quickest alternative through Priest River is a one-hour, 46-mile detour.

“We intentionally plan the projects to avoid this from happening,” Jahns said. “Our goal is that the bumps are addressed, and we do not stall traffic the way it was today. We are prepared to take pretty strong action to avoid this again.”

Specifically, IDT is asking for the superintendent of the project to be replaced.

“The extreme option would be that we just do the work ourselves and bill the contractor for it,” Jahns said.

Thursday’s traffic tangle was not influenced by another construction project which began that morning on the south shore of Long Bridge. Construction on Lakeshore Drive began Thursday morning to re-stripe and add acceleration lanes to the intersection. The project is not working on the bridge directly, but is intended to aid in the flow of traffic entering and exiting the highway.

“Regardless if the work at Lakeshore Drive had started, we still would have seen the traffic snarl we saw today because the night work spilled over into the day.” Jahns said.

Drivers should budget extra time for driving through the area, but lengthy delays like the one on Thursday are not expected to persist.