Two projects with up to $20 million in work are scheduled to get under way early this year in the northern half of the planned North Spokane Corridor, known informally as the north-south freeway.


One project involves removing earth and grading the northernmost section of the planned freeway, says Mike Gribner, the Washington state Department of Transportations North Spokane Corridor project engineer. It also includes transporting a large amount of excess dirt from that area to a section farther south on the route for construction of an embankment.


The other project involves moving a number of utility lines, both above ground and underground, to make way for future phases of freeway construction, Gribner says.


Each of the two jobs will cost between $7 million and $10 million to complete, he says.


In the earth moving and grading project, about a one-mile stretch of the freeway route between Wandermere Road and U.S. 2 will be graded. Also, between 1 million and 2 million cubic yards of earth will be moved from that section and transported to an area south of Hawthorne Road, between Market Street and Fairview Road, for an embankment there.


Gribner says the DOT solicited bids from contractors for that project in November, but the project is being delayed by a lease agreement that exists on a piece of land on which the DOT thought it had secured right of way. He says the DOT expects to resolve that issue soon, and hopes to open bids late this month.


If crews are able to break ground there soon, work still could be completed as scheduled in early 2006.


The utility work involves moving large transmission lines owned by Bonneville Power Administration, Avista Utilities power lines, and communication lines operated by Qwest Communications International Inc., Columbia Fiber Solutions Inc., and others.


The DOT wont bid out that work. Instead, the utilities and other line owners will move the lines themselves, and some of them will be reimbursed after that work is completed, Gribner says. The $7 million-to-$10 million cost refers to the work that will be reimbursed, not the total cost of moving all lines.


The work planned this year follows a $5 million project that started last spring in which Max J. Kuney Co., of Spokane, is lowering part of Farwell Road and constructing four bridges over Farwell. Farwell already has been lowered, though traffic still is being detoured around the new route there, and the bridge work is more than two-thirds done, Gribner says. That phase of the project is scheduled to be completed in June.


The DOT plans four more stages of work in the coming years on the northern portion of the North Spokane Corridor.


In fall of 2008, youll have something to drive on, Gribner says.


Late that year, he says, the DOT hopes to open two lanes of a 4 1/2-mile section of the highway that will extend roughly from the U.S. 2-Farwell Road junction south and east to the intersection of Francis Avenue and Freya Street.


At that time, the freeway wont have any interchangesthough some are planned in later phasesand the speed limit will be 60 miles per hour, Gribner says.


In 2011, he says, the DOT expects to open the one-mile long northernmost leg of the planned freeway between U.S. 2 and U.S. 395, and in all, 5 1/2 miles of the planned 10 1/2-mile freeway then will be completed.


Work completed and planned through 2011 is being funded with $189 million thats being collected over more than a decade from a 5-cent-a-gallon gas-tax increase that the Washington state Legislature passed in 2003.


Funding for the freeway project beyond that hasnt been secured yet, Gribner says, and the DOT currently doesnt have a timetable for completion of the freeway.


Eventually, however, the freeway is designed to extend south and connect to Interstate 90 near the Freya Street interchange.