VALLEY COUNTY, IDAHO, Idaho — Crews with the Idaho Transportation Department plan to resume work on State Highway 55 in Valley County on Monday, March 14.
ITD said when construction resumes, drivers can expect single-lane alternating one-way traffic with 15-minute delays while crews are actively working.
The work between Smiths Ferry and the Rainbow Bridge began in September 2020, and is expected to be complete in late fall of 2022, according to ITD. The project includes widening shoulders, minimizing curves in the roadway and installing guardrail in some sections. Construction has been suspended during the winter.
While construction will resume Monday, the Monday-through-Thursday four-hour midday closures that have been a part of the project will not resume until mid-April. ITD said it will notify the public before those closures begin.
During 2021, two rockslides in the project area closed the highway for about three weeks, and another smaller slide in January 2022 closed the highway for a few days. Those slides raised safety questions. ITD engineering manager Jason Brinkman said the department is going into this spring with lessons learned from those events.
"We have spent the past winter working with geotechnical experts and the project team to change designs based on new information gathered after studying the areas where slides occurred," Brinkman said.
To date, crews have removed over 160,000 cubic yards of materials in the project area.
The spring schedule is anticipated to continue through late May. More information about the Smiths Ferry project is on the ITD website.
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