By Jim Stanford on March 9, 2009
Star Valley, start your engines.
WyDOT’s idea of choices for rebuilding Highway 89 to Hoback Junction:
- Do nothing.
- Build a five-lane superhighway.
- Build a five-lane superhighway for all but the last mile.
When the department presented its draft environmental study for the Hoback 500 Jackson South project, it seemed like something was missing.
Turns out, something is: Teton County’s alternative, which WyDOT conveniently left out. It’s not like the county had been working with WyDOT on that for long — only eight years.
On Feb. 26, the day of the public meeting in Jackson, WyDOT held a workshop with the Teton County commissioners, who were flabbergasted that the county’s alternative — which, incidentally, calls for fewer than five lanes most of the route — was not included in the study.
WyDOT cited a procedural technicality, which was another way of saying its engineers had tossed the county’s plan in the Snake River on the way up from Rock Springs because they didn’t think it was worthwhile.
Commissioner Ben Ellis was most perturbed, questioning District Engineer John Eddins over why the department couldn’t come up with something more innovative than bulldozing half of South Park and the Snake River Canyon.
The county presented a list of 31 contacts with WyDOT — meetings, telephone conversations, e-mails — about the project dating to September 2000, when Jolynn Coonce was county commissioner.
“It was their process and their procedures that we followed,” Ellis said in an interview Sunday.
Teton County alternative for Jackson South project. Click to enlarge.
Features of the county alternative:
- Four lanes from Melody Ranch to South Park bridge, including center lane for left turns
- Five lanes near the Evans gravel plant
- Three lanes for the final three miles to Hoback Junction
- Wildlife crossings at Game Creek, Horse Creek and two other locations
- Four lanes at South Park bridge, three lanes at Horse Creek bridge
The county documented, with Google Earth, four places elsewhere in the state where WyDOT has used this type of design effectively. The county also documented how its plan would meet WyDOT’s desired level of service (a measure of congestion) for all but 15 seconds of southbound rush hour.
Ellis wondered why WyDOT isn’t open to ideas such as a commuter lane, devoted to northbound traffic in the morning and southbound in the evening — a concept used extensively across the United States.
Instead, WyDOT told the commissioners point-blank that the county plan isn’t safe. Ellis was livid at being given a foregone conclusion when WyDOT is supposed to be considering a range of alternatives in its “study.”
“The whole point of having a public process is to have a systematic, semi-scientific evaluation,” Ellis said in the interview. Instead, WyDOT has stacked the deck.
Furthermore, the agency is giving the illusion of having two rebuilding alternatives, when in reality it doesn’t hold easements for the segment closest to Hoback Junction and those would be expensive. The five-lane-the-whole-way alternative is just a straw man, for WyDOT to knock down to make it look like it is compromising and acceding to the community’s wishes.
Ellis said years ago WyDOT told county staff that the department was going to build a five-lane road “whether you like it or not.”
The draft study, he said, is merely “the sum of a long pretend conversation.”
Comments are due at hobackcomments@dot.state.wy.us by 5 p.m. today.
Posted under County Government, Economy, Environment, Politics
This is too bad. There does need to be some improvements but I have never experienced traffic that couldn’t be improved by a much small improvement. I also think the rotary is a bad Idea at the Jct. due to heavy truck traffic.
The Alliance has an easy way to comment:
http://act.jhalliance.org/letters/4
also, for more information see here:
http://www.jhalliance.org/Library/Alerts/2009/JaxSouthInfo.3-2-09.pdf
Excellent story!
We need this kind of in-depth coverage.
Great to know valley residents and local officials wasted nine years having a “pretend” conversation” with WyDOT about the future of our road system. In reality, all along WyDOT has been manipulative and deceitful to the very people who pay their salaries.
WyDOT salaries are paid for with taxpayer dollars. That means WyDOT should be listening carefully when an overwhelming number of Wyoming residents oppose a project.
As many folks here remember, our community had this same discussion with WyDOT over a proposal to widen Wyoming 390 to Teton Village into a five-lane superhighway. When WyDOT shelved that project after a huge public outcry, some people actually believed the agency was leaving the dark ages and becoming more progressive.
Now WyDOT is again proposing a five-lane superhighway but this time in a different part of Jackson. Progressive? Definitely not. A waste of money in a time when so many people are struggling to get by? Absolutely.
Back to the Village road proposal: Others say WyDOT scrapped those plans because it needed easements to widen the road that were just too expensive to acquire. Oh, and those pending lawsuits were a bit troublesome and potentially costly.
Why does it have to take a massive public outcry and high land values to persuade WyDOT to scrap plans for five-lane highways in Jackson Hole?
WyDOT should go ahead and rebuild the road from Melody Ranch to Hoback Junction. It certainly needs it. But only build THREE lanes with a few turnouts at busy crossroads, and add a bike path.
That’s it.
WyDOT could then spend the remainder of allocated funds to improve an additional state road that needs it.
Building five-lane highways in Jackson Hole—where they aren’t wanted or needed—is a fast and wasteful way to spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars in a time when our nation’s economy is teetering on the edge of collapse, In times like these, taxpayer money should be spent even more wisely and prudently.
Another thing … Anyone ever notice the existing stretch from Melody Ranch to Hoback is generally in far better shape after a snowstorm than the five-lane stretch from Melody Ranch to Jackson? Roads are less icy, drier and well-plowed?
Could that be because there are fewer lanes to maintain? And because the same number of cars are traveling over fewer lanes, thus causing the asphalt to air-dry more rapidly?
Three requests for WyDOT:
(1) Please don’t bring up that over-used, lame argument that there’s a silent majority out there clamoring for five lanes to Hoback, because it’s JUST NOT TRUE.
(2) Save the lives of both motorists and wildlife, and build only three lanes.
(3) Want to make the road to Hoback safer as you claim? Then don’t build five lanes. Bigger, wider roads cause people to drive faster and when accidents happen, they are often more deadly. Oh … and try using a little more sand in winter, that might help.