Idaho Free Press from Nampa, Idaho • Page 14

Magazine, aid CaldweU, Mh Salardty, Sepc. 4, 1X5 Spotlight on U.S. SON Gap Being Filled In Superhighway By ARDEN BENTHIEN There's a multi-million dollar gap in U. S. Interstate Highway BON across Southwest Idaho.

And highway planners, engineers and construction men, with drawing boards, transits and roaring bulldozers, are hard at work filling it in. Eastbound travelers on SON today tome sailing across Idaho's western border on four-lane pavement with a 700- mile limit and DO crossroads--only safety-designed interchanges. At Caldwell they suddenly run out of this highway of tile 1960s and are back roads of earlier days. IT'S TWO-LANE ROAD from here eastward across the Boise Valley by any route they choose, to the point where the four-lane freeway resumes southeast of Boise. If they pick Highway 20-26 of Caldwell they have a reasonably modern, straight route to Boise.

If they include N'amps and Meridian on their trip--and many do--their route on Highway 30 is closer to highway standards the 1930s than the 1960s. Either way, they risk the hazards of frequent crossroads and farm lane entries. Either way they must thread a course through Boise on routes now being improved but still congested. Both highways are far behind today's needs for safe modern auto travel at modern All this it due to change, and the changing is under way. BUT W.

W. (BILL) SACHT, District Three engineer of the Idaho Department of Highways, estimates it will take at least three construction seasons after this one before Interstate 80N is complete from northwest of Caldwell to southeast of Boise. Money's not the problem, nor plan- sing. The route across the valley was selected by the fdaho Highway Board-from among eight possible routes--in 1958 after public hearings and the endorsement of the city councils of Calel- Nampa and Meridian. It was chosen as one best serving both the requirements ot through traffic and the need to icrve the cities of the valley.

As for money, the entire project qualifies for federal aid interstate highway funds, amounting to slightly more than 92.33 per cent of the total cost of right- of-way, engineering and construction. Idaho pays the rest. ALL THE CONSTRUCTION is financed cnly from highway user revenue, and uses no ad valorem or property (axes. Idaho's share will be paid from funds derived primarily from the six-cent motor fuel tax. vehicle license fees, gross weight operation fees, permits and fines.

The federal government's share of the highway also will be paid from funds collected in highway user taxes. The chief problem lying between now the completed freeway is simply the volume of work that must be done. It's slow work, expensive work, and Jt's being done, so to speak, in bits and pieces. The long stretches across open lands--from Ontario to Caldwell and from just southeast of Boise on to Mountain Home--are done. The tough parts are what the highway people are tackling now.

ONE SEGMENT nearly completed and to be dedicated around mid-September is 6.6 miles long, from just east of Nampa to a point south of Meridian. It includes a traffic interchange where Highway 69 crosses it south of Meridian, an overpass where Highway 30 crosses it northeast of the Nampa city limits. The latter site will become a diamond interchange as the highway work progresses. It also includes three concrete overpasses and various irrigation and drainage facilities. Morrison-Knudsen Co.

of Boise was the prime contractor and the total cost in round figures was 1,900,000. M-K MEN AND machinery now hard at work at a second part of the highway, the part passing to toe north of Nampa. This project is only 3.1 miles long, but construction costs will be approximately $2,400,000. Building of several expensive projects referred to by engineers as "structures" is necessary to get the four-lane highway through this short distance. Diamond interchanges will built at each end, and a third in the center where Nampa's Franklin Boulevard (completed out to tfie freeway just this summer) crosses it.

The freeway will cross Union Pacific lines at two points, first over the track from Nampa to Emmett, second over the track from Nampa to Meridian. TWO CONCRETE bridges must be built where the highway crosses the Phyllis Canal, and still another structure will be the grade separation to take llth Avenue N. Ext. over the highway. Just to give an idea of what it takes to build modern highways, the Idaho Department of Highways notes some figures of quantities involved in this 3.1- mile stretch.

It requires 150,000 cubic yards of unclassified excavation. 1,110,000 cubic yards of borrow material, 4,300 tons of asphalt, 10,100 feet of concrete or melal pipe, 4,075 cubic yards of concrete, and 168,000 tons of crushed gravel. Such a project would have taken some real time in days of teams and slip scrapers in which the Morrison-Knudsen firm got its start. But it is scheduled for completion in the fall of 1966. ANOTHER PIECE of the eventual freeway, 4.5 miles running from the Meridian interchange to Maple Grove Road, is now under contract with preliminary work under way, Sacht reports.

Roadway contractor here is Peter Kiewit and Sons, with Nielsen-Miller of Twin Falls building the required structures. Probably the next segment in line for construction is the stretch from Caldwell and an interchange at Highways 20-26--over to the Nampa Boulevard iiv terchange northwest of a a RIGHT-OF-WAY acquisition is under way along this route now, Sacht says, and the highway a hopes to advertise for bids on the job this fall. Plans for this part of the freeway place it more or less parallel to the existing Highway 30 and the Union Pacific Railroad between Nampa and Caldwell, and to the north' of the railroad. When this section is completed, and the rest of the construction to get past Boise and out to the resumption of four- lane pavement at Isaac's Canyon, the gap in Interstate 80Nat long last--will be filled in. If the engineers and hard-hatted construction men manage to finish the job in 1968, it will be just 10 years since the route across the Boise Valley was decided.

MARKING THE NEW Federal Interstott Highway through trie valley red, white and blue U.S. ION 119111. This one it Caldwell jutt beyond exit road from Parma. In distance the over- pan carrying Parma traffic. Interstate Markings Large, Distinctive DISTINCTIVE FEATURES of U.S.

SON include largt signs marking turnoffs, distance! to various communities and other details. This sign advises highway Mien that the exit road to Middleton ties just All exirt ore made by right turns. (WEEKENDER PHOTOS).