County road work priority list being set

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Feb 24, 20160

A priority list is taking shape for improvements to Whitman County paved roads.

Cited roads for a $750,000 federal Surface Transportation Act grant include: Endicott Road, Endicott-St. John Road, Hay-LaCrosse Road, Garfield-Farmington Road, Glenwood Road, Johnson Road, Lancaster Road, Old Thornton Highway, Palouse Cove Road, Pine City-Malden Road, Pullman-Albion Road and Pullman-Airport Road.

“The need is throughout the county,” said Mark Storey, Whitman County public works director.

Other roads on the list include Endicott South Road, Rock Lake Road, Winona South and Wawawai Road.

Each of the routes which made the list have a higher functional classification – a federal distinction – which notes pathways important for commerce.

Roads on the priority list which do not meet the federal classification are based on average daily traffic.

Each has been determined to be an area of higher accident rates, due to a few factors.

“Horizontal curves, excessive speed and alcohol,” said Storey. “I don’t know how we can design something to account for alcohol.”

Storey and his staff will now whittle down the list to fit their budget.

“By early summer, we’ll have a plan together,” he said.

Storey updated county commissioners on the process at their last meeting, Feb. 15.

Now that the list is formed, picking and choosing to fit under the $750,000 limit comes next.

“We’ll be at that stage in the next few weeks,” Storey said. “It might be a couple hundred projects that get done.”

Individual projects may range from installing a guardrail – one mile costs $100,000 – or a single road sign for $50-$100.

Storey’s goal is to go out to bid this summer for work to come soon after, or wait until next year.

The work on embankments, signage, tree removal, power poles and more will be part of the county’s paved-road improvement project funded by the federal Surface Transportation Act.

Storey and staff reviewed reports of a Lidar study – a type of remote sensing – conducted last fall which photographed all 430 miles of paved roads in the county, creating “positional data” to be used to decipher factors which contribute to accidents.