Malden christens new road

Malden celebrated the opening of a brand new road through town with a ribbon cutting ceremony last Wednesday, Oct. 17.

With funding from the state Transporation Improvement Board, the main two-lane road that stretches 1.1 miles from each end of city limits was completely rebuilt.

“The whole thing was shot,” said Mayor Ted Maxwell.

A ceremony with a road-decorated cake and coffee was in Town Hall to mark the new road’s opening.

“It’s a pleasure to slow down going through town now,” said Whitman County Commissioner Greg Partch. “Now, instead of slowing down for the chuckholes, you can slow down and enjoy the scenery.”

Partch has served on the state’s Transportation Improvement Board since 2005.

He noted Malden was the last town in Whitman County to have a construction project funded through the TIB.

“It’s something I’m really glad I could accomplish,” said Partch.

Partch will leave the board after this year, having been ousted from his commissioner seat in the August primary election. He served three terms on the Whitman County commission.

Originally, the board had granted Malden funding for an estimated $400,000 rebuild of four blocks of Broadway. More funding was committed for an overlay of Moreland Ave.

By combining the two projects into one reconstruction, said Randy Noble, one of the engineers on the project from Thomas Dean & Hoskins out of Spokane, costs of mobilizing crews were reduced enough to pay for the entire rebuild of more than a mile of road.

“So you have a project that totals a little more than $600,000,” said Noble.

An innovative technique for recycling the material of the old road was also employed to hold down costs of hauling the rock away.

The road surface was torn up by construction crews. That pavement was then ground up and mixed with cement to create the new road surface.

Steve Marsh, another engineer with Thomas Dean & Hoskins said it is the first TIB-funded project to use the technique.

“It creates a real nice surface, and we hardly had to haul away any material,” said Marsh, who credited civil engineer John Duval of Portland for helping walk them through the process.

Duval was also on hand at the ribbon cutting ceremony to check out the road.

“It turned out beautifully,” he said, gazing down the road toward Pine City.

Funding for the Transportation Improvement Board comes from a three-cent tax on gasoline. Funding into the program last year equated to more than 25 million gallons of gas, noted Partch.