As the center of the Treasure Valley, Meridian is the connection point for key roadways to and through our community. Residents, business owners, visitors and more all drive on Meridian roads regularly, seeking ease and safe accessibility to their destinations. Transportation, specifically the widening of roads and intersections, has long been the number one priority of Meridian’s residents. People want to get from point A to point B as quickly and as safely as possible.

Addressing transportation has always been a challenge as Meridian relies upon the Ada County Highway District (ACHD) and the Idaho Transportation Department for the necessary road improvements, as well as our development community. This transportation collaboration continues to develop the road network that shapes our travel in Meridian.

As part of this process, the City of Meridian submits a list of its transportation priorities to ACHD every year for their Integrated Five-Year Work Plan (IFYWP).  This ensures our priorities can be considered with other needed road improvements throughout Ada County. ACHD’s IFYWP is essentially a public facing document that shows how they plan to spend their capital budget on transportation infrastructure. This includes major roadway intersection projects, bridges, community programs, traffic safety needs, and environmental programs, such as storm drains. Typically, road construction projects take around 5 years to complete, with four different phases. These phases include conception, design, right-of-way, and finally construction. All of this needs to be planned accordingly, and many key factors need to be taken into consideration such as funding sources and the priorities of ACHD’s partner agencies, including us.

Last week, Meridian submitted its priority lists. The lists were first reviewed by the City’s Transportation Commission before they were sent to City Council for consideration. The lists of priority projects focus on the need to provide improved facilities for Meridian residents to improve the flow of traffic in the Treasure Valley. The City’s top priority continues to be the development of the Linder Road Overpass and the associated roadway widening project. Design is complete for this project and ACHD is working through the right-of-way purchases to allow the construction of this project to start as planned. Once complete, this project will provide much needed relief for motorists and pedestrians both north and south of I-84, and for users of the Ten Mile and Meridian Interchanges. You can find the full list of prioritized projects here.

The next step is for ACHD to review and prioritize the more than 800 projects submitted across Ada County. Once complete, an initial draft of their 5-year plan is released in July, giving the community an opportunity to review and provide additional feedback on all projects in the plan. If you would like to comment on the list once it is open for feedback, we will keep you informed on when that opportunity exists. We will also continue to stay engaged and provide feedback to ACHD to ensure our priorities are being addressed.

We are vested in bringing needed road improvements to Meridian, as are our government and private sector partners. Let’s continue to advocate for our needs so we can all have the transportation network we deserve.