From the Regional Administrator
Welcome to our July newsletter. We’re in the middle of a busy highway construction season and have a major event on the North Spokane Corridor coming up. Read on for details.
As always, if you have any questions on items in this newsletter, or other transportation issues, please let me know. Give me a call at (509) 324-6010 or drop me an e-mail at metcalk@wsdot.wa.gov .
Keith Metcalf
Regional Administrator
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First North Spokane Corridor segment opens to traffic in August
I am proud to announce the opening of the first drivable segment on the US 395 North Spokane Corridor. This three-mile section, from Freya/Francis to Farwell Road, will open to traffic on Saturday, August. 22nd.
An official “first ribbon-cutting” ceremony to celebrate this major milestone will be held on the new highway at 1 p.m. on Saturday, August 22. The ceremony will be followed by a classic car parade.
The day will celebrate the first use of a section of the new highway. A north/south route for the Spokane area has been in the concept stage since the mid 1940s.
The August 22 date is somewhat significant. The North Spokane Corridor groundbreaking ceremony was held on the same date in 2001. That ceremony was followed by the first earthwork job in the corridor. Construction work took off with the passage of the 2003 gas tax package. That legislation funded a series of eight North Spokane Corridor projects, including the work on this first drivable section.
This first segment opened to traffic will have one lane in each direction separated by a lane-width median. Vehicles will travel on what eventually will be the northbound side of the future fully divided freeway.
The event is open to the public. For details on parking and the STA shuttle to the event location, go to our website at http://www.nscfreeway.com/ and click on the “Ribbon-Cutting” link on the left of the page.
In other NSC news, we just opened the construction bids for the next major project, US 2 to Wandermere. The contract should be awarded within the next few weeks and work should get underway later this summer. When this job is completed in 2011, we’ll be able to open another segment of the NSC and connect to the existing US 395.
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Drivers need to be alert and plan their travels around several major paving projects
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or “Stimulus” program, as it’s more commonly known, is funding several paving projects on state highways in our Region.
There are paving projects on US 2 from its intersection with SR 211 through the City of Newport, US 395 from the Stevens County Line near Deer Park to Immel Road north of Chewelah, and on SR 206 from US 2 to Bruce Road.
All of these projects are just getting underway, and drivers need to be alert over the next couple of months and plan their travels with extra time for possible construction delays.
Although we try to limit the impacts of our work on the traveling public, these rural highway paving jobs usually mean single-lane traffic with flaggers and pilot cars directing traffic. In particular, US 2 and US 395 have such high traffic volumes that it’s difficult for our contractors to work without causing some inconveniences to drivers.
We’ll try to get this work done as quickly and efficiently as possible, but please be patient and allow more time for your trips if you travel these highways this summer.
Although it’s not funded through the Stimulus program, our contractor is still busy on Interstate 90 in the Spokane area. They are still paving shoulders and on/off ramps along with placing new signs. Most of that work is underway at night. The job should wrap up by Labor Day.
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Trees and rocks are just what the stream needed
We had a project on State Route 20 on Sherman Pass this season. This Rock Slope Scaling Project was in place to remove loose rock and trees that could have potentially slid down onto the highway. The material removed from the slope was hauled from our Sherman Pass site to the Growden stream reclamation site along SR 20. This reclamation project is being run by the US Forest Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers. They were very happy to take all the trees and rocks that we could deliver to them. They are reclaiming the stream at the Growden site. The trees and rocks will be utilized in the streambed restoration.