IDAHO FALLS — A semitruck wedged under the Northgate Mile or D Street underpass is a somewhat familiar sight in Idaho Falls.
EastIdahoNews.com contacted the city of Idaho Falls to find out how many semitrailers have become lodged in the underpasses in the past five years.
“I have found 11 instances of semis or their loads striking and becoming stuck under the D Street underpass from Jan. 1, 2020, to today,” Idaho Falls Police Department spokeswoman Jessica Clements responded in an email. “This doesn’t include close calls where a driver realized they were too tall before striking the bridge and backed out.”
At times, drivers require assistance from traffic control to back away from the structure and find another route.
“Sometimes, if traffic is light, they just work themselves out, and we never hear about it,” Clements said.
Due to its imprecise address, data was not available for how many trucks become stuck each year at the Northgate Mile underpass.
Although two confirmed incidents a year may not seem drastic, the incidents generate volumes of attention and comments on social media – with more than 1,000 reactions and hundreds of comments on two recent occurrences .
The city is working on a long-term solution.
“We are working with the Idaho Transportation Department to install an advanced warning system as an additional alert to drivers of the height restrictions of both the D Street and Yellowstone (Northgate Mile) underpasses,” said city spokesman Eric Grossarth.
The advanced warning system is in the design phase, and details are not yet available about its features or alert mechanism.
“At this point, we’ve identified and signed an agreement to receive state funding for that project,” Grossarth said. “But we are still working through the engineering and design processes of what that system will look like and how it will be implemented.”
After the system has been designed, contractors will have an opportunity to bid on the project, and a timeline will be laid out for its implementation.
For now, drivers should follow existing signs.
“Already at this point, if you drive on Yellowstone Highway, there are warning signs several miles in advance of those bridges,” Grossarth said.
The city has a maintenance agreement with Idaho Transportation Department to help maintain Northgate Mile/Yellowstone Highway, also known as U.S. Highway 26, which runs through Idaho Falls, he added.
The original railroad bridge over the highway was erected in the 1930s, Grossarth said, long before commercial trucks were on the roadway and modern highway standards were implemented.
But for now, the problem remains persistent and unresolved.
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Somewhat ironically, at the D Street underpass, a truck crashed into the structure the same day it was rededicated after a ribbon-cutting for underpass’ expansion in 2014, EastIdahoNews.com reported previously. That expansion did improve the underpass, but not enough to prevent larger trucks from getting stuck.
The post Stuck trucks: City working to resolve underpass height woes with early warning system appeared first on East Idaho News .
