ITD briefs committee
on Highway 75 progress
Funding process will
creep and crawl
for years
"It gives me the creeps to think
(Highway 75 improvements) would be under construction for 20 years."
— CHARLES CARNOHAN, ITD senior
environmental planner
By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer
Improving 25 miles of state Highway 75
from Ketchum south to the Timmerman Junction at U.S. 20 will proceed at two
speeds—slow or slower.
This seemed to be the message Thursday,
Jan. 29, when two Idaho Transportation Department officials briefed the Wood
River Regional Transportation Committee.
The $107 million project is complicated by
a series of some eight separate segments, each requiring environmental study,
separate engineering and design, rights-of-way land acquisition in some cases
and incremental funding—all before construction starts.
ITD District Engineer Devin Rigby and
Charles Carnohan, a senior environmental planner, outlined the project’s current
status as well as funding realities.
How long the project is from completion
will depend on how fast required pre-construction stages are completed and
approved and funds are made available.
Carnohan said that by April, the first
phase of an environmental impact statement on the Highway 75 project will be
completed. Then, after a series of public hearings, the final EIS statement
required by the National Environmental Policy Act should be completed and
approved by November or December.
But construction still is years away,
Carnohan said.
Funding requests must be renewed each year
for project segments whose individual costs range between $3.5 million to $18.5
million each, he said.
Carnohan estimates that under the pace of
current congressional funding, $22 million of work would be approved by 2005 and
the remaining $85 million in work would be approved between 2006 and
2009--provided no hitches develop.
"It gives me the creeps to think (Highway
75 improvements) would be under construction for 20 years," Carnohan said.
However, a possible funding complication
may have developed since last week’s briefing.
President Bush was reported by The New
York Times on Sunday to have decided to oppose a Republican and Democratic plan
in Congress to spend $375 billion over the next six years on highway work, which
would exceed available gasoline tax funds by $100 billion.
Instead, the president reportedly would
trim spending back to $251 billion. White House sources say the president would
veto the congressional level of funding. Whether this reduction would affect the
Highway 75 project won’t be known until appropriations bills are approved.
Idaho’s Republican congressional
delegation, which ultimately would lobby for the state’s share of highway
dollars, is being kept abreast of project progress. Linda Norris, an aide to
Sen. Mike Crapo, joined in the briefing by conference telephone from her Twin
Falls office.
Blaine County Commissioner Sarah Michael
also told the committee that "people don't want to just see a highway" widened
and improved. "They want options--such as buses."
She mentioned the possibility that rather
than continue a lease arrangement for buses for the Peak Bus commuter service,
Blaine County might arrange for the purchase of a bus for the service and ask
the city of Ketchum’s KART office to manage and operate the system.
Last week’s meeting also ran into a
procedural snag: only three of the regional transportation committee’s 10 voting
members showed up—Ketchum City Councilman Randy Hall, who is the committee’s
chair; Sun Valley Mayor Jon Thorsen and Blaine County Commission Chairman Dennis
Wright.
Without a quorum, the committee was unable
to act on several items of business.