Transportation board grants $2 million for town roads

Gazette Reporters

Colton will get a new road, and St. John and Oakesdale will greatly improve streets as grants from the Washington State Transportation Improvement Board were announced last week.

Whitman County entities were awarded a total of $2,027,767 in transportation grants from the board for projects that will be done next year.

Most major project was in Colton, where the city was awarded $680,000 to build a new street to divert heavy traffic from driving in front of the Colton school.

The new street, called Rimrock Street, will connect Rimrock Road directly to Highway 195 on the north end of the school’s ball fields.

Traffic from Rimrock Road, which Mayor Jerry Weber said is primarily grain trucks, currently has to take a pair of sharp turns near the school to access the highway en route to grain elevators.

The new street will be 40-feet wide with curbs and sidewalks on both ends. A right turn pocket will be added at the highway intersection.

St. John was awarded $589,000 to rebuild a quarter-mile of Park Avenue, the town’s main north-south arterial which connects downtown with the Endicott Road.

Maintenance foreman Roger Bly said the rebuild will help shore the road base to support the heavy grain trucks that usually travel down the street.

Park Avenue is also torn up from the town’s new water system, which replaced pipes all over town and is nearing completion.

Curbs will be added to both sides of the street to improve stormwater drainage.

Oakesdale received $496,250 to repave and install sidewalks along Front Street, which runs from the Steptoe street uphill to the school. The road is also severely cracked.

The TIB project will widen the street to 25 feet and will better align it to the intersection of Highway 27. The new sidwalk on one side will make a safer walkway to the school.

The project will be a block south of the sidewalk ramp project which upgraded pedestrian access between the schools and the downtown area.

Whitman County Commissioner Greg Partch is serving as chairman of the Transportation Improvement Board this year. He said the entire board decides on awards, but his position as chair did help applications from Whitman County entities.

“And it never hurts to have a seat at the table,” said Partch, who said he took TIB director Steve Gorcester to Colton and Oakesdale to view the project proposals before the award.

Applications for the small cities projects were up 30 percent this year, Partch said, largely because of his efforts to reach out to small communities.

“I tried to go to all the town councils and stress this program, because TIB has done so much in Whitman County,” he said.

Garfield, LaCrosse, Palouse and Rosalia received a combined $262,517 in funding for crack sealing, pavement overlays and sidewalk rebuilds.