The Washington state Department of Transportation is expected to begin design and engineering work this summer and to start construction early next year on a new freeway on-ramp that would carry vehicles headed northbound on Division Street from the South Hill onto eastbound Interstate 90.


Glenn Miles, director of the Spokane Regional Transportation Council (SRTC), says that last month the SRTCs board allocated $4.5 million in U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration funds to cover the estimated cost of the project.


The new on-ramp qualifies for money from a reserve fund set aside by the Federal Highway Administration for congestion-mitigation and air-quality improvement projects.


The on-ramp is intended to reduce congestion in the downtown area along whats called the Third Avenue corridor, which encompasses Third and Second avenues from Washington Street to Browne Street, says Eric Skelton, director of the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority. The new on-ramp is expected to help the Spokane metropolitan area avoid potential violations of the federal carbon monoxide air pollution standard.


The state DOT believes it already owns all of the right-of-way necessary to build the new on-ramp, although it wont know for sure until design and engineering work have gotten under way, Miles says. The on-ramp is expected to be built just south of where the freeway passes over Division Street. He says that drivers likely would turn right off of Division and onto the on-ramp, which would head directly east onto I-90.


The Spokane metropolitan area, which was designated a non-attainment area for carbon monoxide in the 1970s, was downgraded in April 1998 from a moderate to a serious non-attainment area because of carbon monoxide violations recorded in December 1995, says Skelton. Upon doing that, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the Washington state Department of Ecology until Dec. 31, 2000, to bring the Spokane metropolitan area into compliance with federal carbon monoxide standards, and until October 1999 to submit an attainment plan. The attainment plan is a document that proves solutions have been implemented to allow an entire metropolitan areanot just carbon monoxide monitoring sitesto attain the federal carbon monoxide standard of less than nine parts of carbon monoxide per one million molecules of air over any eight-hour average, Skelton says.


To prove that the entire Spokane area has attained the standard, the state with the help of the SCAPCA and the SRTC had to develop a computer model that would predict what the concentration of carbon monoxide would be at sites scattered throughout the metropolitan area.


Skelton says that due to the complexity of the modeling that was required, the state missed the deadline for submitting the attainment plan. Last month, the EPA extended the deadline another 18 months with the understanding that if the new October 2001 deadline is missed, federal transportation funds would be withheld and major new industrial facilities couldnt be built here.


Skelton is confident that the second attainment plan deadline wont be missed. He says the modeling process has been completed now and the Department of Ecology is expected to submit the attainment plan to the EPA by October of this year.


During the modeling process, however, it was learned that under the worst weather conditions, Spokane could violate the federal carbon monoxide standard at the monitoring site at Third Avenue and Washington Streetthe same site where the city violated carbon monoxide levels during 1995, causing it to be slapped with the serious non-attainment designation.


Third and Washington continues to be a hot spot because of traffic-flow problems, Skelton says.


He explains that many motorists who are leaving the South Hill medical district to travel eastbound on I-90 take Division north to Second, turn left onto Second, turn left again onto Browne, and then head up a freeway on-ramp. To avoid forcing drivers to take that loop, SCAPCA, the SRTC, and the Department of Ecology decided that a new freeway on-ramp should be built for northbound traffic on Division.


By adding the on-ramp, well take a ton of traffic off of Third, Skelton says. According to the modeling, that will bring us to where we need to be.


Miles says that the new on-ramp should reduce the number of vehicles traveling the Division to Second to Browne to I-90 loop by about 900 during the peak commuting time on weekday evenings.


Its hoped that the new on-ramp would be completed by the end of 2001, Skelton says. He says that even under that construction timetable, the state will miss its Dec. 31, 2000, deadline to attain the federal carbon monoxide pollution standard. He says, though, that the state is working with the EPA to receive a conditional approval of the Spokane areas attainment status with the understanding that a final approval would be given once the on-ramp was completed.


Once the attainment plan is submitted and the EPA approves the plan, the state must submit to EPA a maintenance plan that would describe how the Spokane metropolitan area would maintain suitable air quality for 10 years. The maintenance plan also would outline what measures the metropolitan area would take if it were to violate the carbon monoxide standard again.


Its expected that the maintenance plan will take an additional two years to complete, Skelton says. After its completed and approved, however, the Spokane metropolitan area finally will shed its non-attainment designation.