Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Improve safety on Highway 75

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It's refreshing to see that our Idaho Transportation Department is upgrading the busy intersection of Woodside Boulevard and Highway 75 (near Power Engineers), as well as adding an innovative new traffic signal there.

The stretch of road between Hailey and Bellevue is deceptively dangerous. Those who perished or who were severely injured in this treacherous stretch were not mere statistics, and many were close family and friends of our tightly knit community.

In the further interest of safety, I would urge that our highway department discontinue its use of the newfangled energy-saving lights, which they have "upgraded" to, within their signal lamps. These often do not generate enough heat to immediately burn off the gathering snow from their red and green light covers during the frequent blustery blizzards we receive in winter.

Two last items that I would like to encourage our open-minded ITD administrators to focus on for our healthy future are lowering the speed limit on the stretch between Bellevue and Hailey to 45 or 50 mph and installing a robust high-walled median strip between the north and south lanes, along with turnouts at the appropriate places, of course.

Jim Banholzer

Ketchum

Editor's note: According to the Idaho Transportation Department's Office of Highway Safety, on state Highway 75 between Hailey and Bellevue since 1987 there have been four fatalities in two crashes. Both involved drunk drivers. There have been three serious-injury crashes.

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