BOISE — Round two of the Cloverdale bridge demolition gets underway Tuesday night, and all of the construction has some people wondering if the new bridge will include an on- and off-ramp.
Chrystal Logan is one of the people who reached out to KTVB.
She moved to Meridian in 2012 and has seen a need for another interchange.
“There's nothing between Franklin and Eagle [roads] to get off the freeway and we have boomed in growth and it is needed,” Logan said.
KTVB reached out to Idaho Department of Transportation and asked about the possibility of building an interchange.
“It's an understandable concern where people are coming from, that the distance between the interchanges on the interstate and this area, particularly given the density and how many people need to use it, but it's not really something that is feasible,” ITD spokesman Jake Melder said.
He says there are a number of factors that the department must first look at.
“I think the first question that you need to ask is what would be the purpose of putting in a new interchange,” Melder said. “There's a lot of cars that use Eagle Road and so the thought is - put an interchange at Cloverdale and you can pull some of the cars off Eagle Road. The thing is you're just going to exchange either convenience or congestion in one area for another area.”
The other concern is spacing.
“There's only a mile between Eagle Road and Cloverdale, and the road and the ramps from Eagle are very long ramps,” Melder said. “If we were to take ramps from Eagle Road and have it connect in somewhere with Cloverdale it would be really tight. You'd have a lot of weaving movement between those two interchanges which will slow you down and create some real safety hazards.”
Lastly, ITD has to look at the impact to the land.
“If you were to take the Eagle Road interchange and just impose it on top of the area where Cloverdale is, you can see it would cover a lot of neighborhoods, and a school, as well as a park,” Melder said.
When the bridge is completed, it will go from two lanes to five lanes.
Those lanes will include two travel lanes and a center lane, as well as facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians on the shoulders.
Crews will shut down the westbound lanes, as well as two eastbound lanes of I-84, between Eagle Road and the Flying Wye starting at 10 p.m. on Tuesday.
Crews expect to reopen those lanes at 6 a.m. on Wednesday.
The construction comes after a fiery crash significantly damaged the overpass back in June.
Four people died in that crash.