Long-anticipated improvements to state Highway 75 are still in question, but without a Wednesday afternoon vote by the Ketchum City Council they were already doomed.
The City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to endorse a four-lane highway design between Elkhorn Road and Serenade Lane in order to keep an environmental impact statement on the entire highway corridor—between the blinking light at U.S. Highway 20 and Saddle Road north of Ketchum—alive.
"I'm trying to satisfy a lawyer in San Francisco. That's all," said Diana Atkins, a senior project manager for Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc., the company contracted by the Idaho Department of Transportation to work on an environmental impact statement for the corridor. In its current incarnation, it's been a seven-year process, but the highway improvement debate goes back decades.
The City Council voted to commit to the four-lane design in order to keep the EIS alive. Without that commitment—or a commitment to a design in general—the final EIS could not have moved on to a record of decision, and funding would not come.
He said it in jest, but there was truth in a quip by Ketchum Mayor Randy Hall. Hall summed up the long and drawn-out history of highway improvements and his city's longstanding position as one of the key roadblocks to highway widening.
"When you say 'letter from the community,' I mean it only took us 25 years to get that last letter," he said. "So, hopefully, maybe we could move a little bit quicker."
Along with support and pertinent questions at the meeting from officials from the city of Sun Valley—along with agreement from Sun Valley Mayor Jon Thorson to sign the city of Ketchum's letter of endorsement—progress appeared to have been forged.
The design endorsed by the city Wednesday includes four 11-foot travel lanes, as well as 2-foot curbs with gutters. There is additional room in the 66-foot right of way for sidewalks, bike paths or natural vegetation.
Two additional options were put before the council, one including four 11-foot lanes and a 12-foot center median and one including two 12-foot lanes and a 14-foot center median.
The City Council's endorsement of "Cross Section 1" does not, however, commit the eventual highway design to the one chosen Wednesday. It does ensure that funding—slated at $28 million as opposed to the $110 million requested—can move forward.
Atkins and ITD Senior Transportation Planner Charles Carnohan presented their conundrum—that of needing a decision in order to complete the record of decision on the EIS—to the City Council at the noon meeting on Wednesday.
Failure to make a commitment to a highway design "will significantly delay, essentially stop progress" on moving forward with the EIS, Carnohan said. "So, we either do something with what we have, or we stop."
Carnohan stressed that the ultimate highway design may not be the same as what the City Council approved Wednesday. Endorsing a design was a technicality of sorts. The city's endorsement must be filed as part of the EIS before the record of decision can be filed. And a record of decision must be filed before Congress allocates funding.
The relatively short section of highway inside Ketchum city limits is small, "but it's such a huge part because it could have stopped the entire process," Carnohan said.
Although the issue of funding is still up in the air—even with the City Council's vote—Carnohan was optimistic.
"The money will come," he said. "It's just a matter of when. But we need to get the record of decision first. When we get (the National Environmental Policy Act) finished, the money will become available."
The planned Highway 75 project is some 25 miles long, extending from Ketchum to Timmerman Hill, at the junction of Highway 75 with east-west Highway 20. The plan has called for expanding the highway to four lanes through most of the Wood River Valley.
As originally envisioned, some stretches would be widened to eliminate bottlenecks that cause traffic backups during peak times, plus environmental, pedestrian and bicycling amenities.
Carnohan said funding for highway improvement projects nationwide has stagnated in the face of rising oil and transportation costs.
However, a relatively solid commitment of $23 million has been set aside by Congress for a portion of the Highway 75 project, Devin Rigby, District 4 engineer for the Idaho Transportation Department, said last month.
But the funds probably wouldn't be available for use until the year 2010, Rigby said Feb. 27.
The week before, a grimmer Rigby announced to the Blaine County Regional Transportation Committee that the promised $100 million-plus for the project had vanished due to a combination of overstated financing abilities of the state and tighter federal budgeting for highways. Some estimates are that the total project would now cost $180 million because of increased construction and rights-of-way costs.
On another front, Rigby said the Environmental Impact Statement for the entire project is nearing completion, and state as well as county and municipal officials in the Wood River Valley will be asked to huddle and help target must-do priorities for the $23 million he said will be available in later years, including which rights of way, passing lanes and intersections are most critical.
"With limited funds, we'll be searching for projects with the greatest benefit and impact," he said. Specifically, "the closer to Ketchum, the higher the need" for traffic congestion relief, Rigby said.
But he still doesn't believe actual work can begin before 2010.
An environmental impact statement for the entire Highway 75 corridor could not have moved forward without endorsement by the Ketchum City Council of a design option for the road inside city limits. The City Council endorsed a four-lane option Wednesday afternoon with the knowledge that it was merely funding that would be freed up?and not a highway design committed to. Photo by David N. Seelig
