Submitted by Ken Watts.
Approximately 70 members of the Island Park/Fremont County community met twice to discuss a design solution for improvements to US 20 Ashton to SH 87 near the Montana border. A decision was made to form a proposal committee. 17 members of the community agreed to be on the committee. The proposal was developed over several months and is about 50 pages long. It is not practical to publish the entire proposal in the Island Park News. However the executive summary from the proposal can be published for your use and information. Ken’s Korner will publish a 3 part series that will contain the entire executive summary. The proposal is being sent to decision makers in the area and the State and will also be sent to news outlets across the State. The following is the first part of the series: 1.0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Idaho Transportation Department has initiated the Planning and Environmental Linkages process for upgrades to US Highway 20 from Ashton to State Highway 87. ITD quickly down selected the design options for the highway to only include four lane options with virtually no involvement from the public on the selection committee. January 2020 notes from an ITD Board meeting reveal that the Chief Operating Officer for ITD stated that ideally this highway should be four lanes and subsequent board meeting notes progressively reveal ITD D6 positioning to pursue multiple lanes leading up to October 2021 and the PEL initiation. These comments are considered pre-decisional which is prohibited by the National Environmental Policy Act. ITD had completed a study in 2020 that determined that adding passing lanes was an acceptable approach for meeting the highway purpose and need to 2042 and beyond. This study was withheld from the public. A public records request was used to get the study. Residents of the Island Park and Fremont County were very displeased with the conduct of the PEL process. A community meeting was held in June of 2022 to discuss the highway design. The meeting was attended by about 70 people and elected representatives. The people, by a show of hands, unanimously opposed a four lane freeway in the Island Park area. There was near unanimous support for a “Super 2” highway design that adds passing lanes and widens shoulders. This information was given to ITD but ITD continued the four lane march in spite of the adamant public opposition. The community held a second meeting in September 2022 to discuss the situation. At that meeting, the attendees (~70) agreed to prepare a community proposal (this proposal) for the highway. The proposal would recommend a Super 2 highway design based on the design work already completed by JUB Engineers in 2020, at a cost of $3.24M to the State of Idaho. The proposal would be prepared for the ITD Board because the Board controls the highway funding.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Making Sense of It All
This blog will help you make sense out of all the information on the website, how it affects IP, our history, and how efforts continue to put IP into various forms of conservation status. Archives
May 2023
Categories |