MOSCOW, ID – Efforts appear to be moving ahead for a proposed truck route South of Pullman and Moscow.
The latest step in the process is revealed in documents to Moscow City Council’s Public Works/Finance Committee for their meeting Monday afternoon. The project calls for building a truck bypass to help move freight traffic out of downtown Pullman and Moscow. The effort is led by Whitman County and the Palouse Regional Transportation Planning Organization. The plan calls for improving existing roads from East of Moscow to South of Pullman. The proposed truck route’s Eastern end would tie into State Highway 8 near Moscow. It would run South on Moscow Mountain Road and then East on Palouse River Drive through U.S. Highway 95 to the state border. The route continues on Sand and Kirkendahl Roads South of Pullman to US195.
Documents show that Whitman County wants to apply for a federal grant to pay for most of the 2.5 million dollars to design the route. Since the truck route would also benefit Moscow, city council is being asked to earmark a local match of 110,000 dollars to be spent if the federal design money is allocated. If approved that money would come from the City of Moscow’s capital project fund.
This effort ramped up last fall when Moscow City Council agreed to spend up to 13,500 hundred dollars to help pay the consultant firm Welch Comer to apply for the design grant. That followed narrow approval from the Whitman County Commissioners to chip in up to 31,500 dollars to Welch Comer. Commissioner Chad Whetzel voted against that agreement while Commissioners Art Swannack and Tom Handy approved the deal. At that time the total project was estimated to cost about 19 million dollars.
New documents to Moscow’s Public Works/Finance Committee now shows the truck bypass is expected to cost a total of nearly 23 million dollars. The work would include reconstructing two miles of Kirkendahl Road from gravel to a paved truck route. A bridge needs to be replaced on Sand Road in Whitman County. A roundabout would be constructed for the intersection of Palouse River Drive and Mountain View Road Southeast of Moscow.
The documents estimate that the freight route would take about 200 heavy trucks out of downtown Pullman and Moscow every day outside of harvest. Officials estimate that number would be “substantially higher” during harvest.
Moscow City Council’s Public Works/Finance Committee will begin looking at the local match request during their meeting Monday at 4:00 in city hall.
