Study recommends widening US 85 from Watford City to I-94

[Kniwt]

The Williston Herald reports:
https://www.willistonherald.com/news/study-recommends-plan-for-widening-u-s/article_e680ed36-45cb-11e9-852d-67b5b82af4d7.html

A Environmental Impact Study on expanding U.S. Highway 85 to four lanes from the Watford City bypass to Interstate 94 has been completed, The North Dakota Department of Transportation announced Wednesday, March 13.

... The study determined the best option is to build a four-lane highway with a depressed center median. When the road passes through Fairfield, the speed limit would drop to 45 mph. When Highway 85 meets ND 200, the study recommends installing a roundabout with a speed limit of 25 mph.

For the Long X Bridge, three options were considered: rehabilitating the current bridge and adding another two-land bridge next to the existing one; building a four-lane bridge and keeping the existing bridge for alternate use; or building a new bridge and removing the existing bridge. The study recommends the last option. That part of the project is already in the works.

NDDOT project page: http://www.dot.nd.gov/projects/williston/US85I94/

[The Ghostbuster]

What are the traffic counts on this segment of US 85? Are they high enough to warrant a four-lane expansion?

[Brandon]

What are the traffic counts on this segment of US 85? Are they high enough to warrant a four-lane expansion?

It may be due to the truck traffic to/from Williston.

[Chris]

The volumes aren't very high, around or just over 3,000 vehicles per day. But the truck share is around 30%. Volumes are similar to the western segment of I-94 in Montana and North Dakota though.

[edwaleni]

First off Andeavor Corporation (Tesoro) is building a large oil refinery in Dickinson, ND which is just south on I-94. It will only be a 10k barrels a day, but they plan to expand it to 40,000 barrels a day.

That is a lot of Bakken oil being trucked down from Williston and Watford City

Second, there is a housing boom in Watford City and the oil suppliers are clustered in and around the intersection of US2 and US85 west of Williston.

That explains the traffic to and from in that area. Basically Williston has become priced out for oil workers, so they are moving into Watford City.

So I think the ND highway planners are anticipating a great deal of more traffic between Williston and Dickinson.

[froggie]

They're likely anticipating some sort of traffic/oil cargo increase, though that won't happen until oil prices jump...Bakken oil isn't very profitable at current oil prices.

Though that's a large number of trucks, the overall volumes south of Watford City don't exactly scream 4 lanes.  Climbing lanes (above and beyond the existing lanes climbing out of the Little Missouri valley) and/or a mile of passing lane every 8-10 miles should suffice for these volumes and even a 50% increase.

[Stephane Dumas]

Since that gap of US-85 is also part of the CanAm highway where it continue north of the border as SK-35, SK-39 and SK-6 to Regina and SK Dot currently plan to upgrade SK-6 and SK-39 4-lanes from Regina to Estevan might also played a role.

[Chris]

I suppose you can view it as an extension of the Heartland Expressway project.

For international truck traffic, the US 52 corridor is a more important route. There are 575 trucks crossing at Portal and only 30 (!) at the US 85 crossing north of Fortuna.

From a European perspective it's interesting to see how low the traffic counts are on a four lane corridor. For example US 2 from Minot to Devils Lake is a four lane divided highway with traffic volumes between 2,000 and 3,000 vehicles per day. In most of Europe you won't see any four laning unless volumes are well over 10,000 and often closer to 20,000 vehicles per day.

[M86]

I suppose you can view it as an extension of the Heartland Expressway project.

For international truck traffic, the US 52 corridor is a more important route. There are 575 trucks crossing at Portal and only 30 (!) at the US 85 crossing north of Fortuna.

From a European perspective it's interesting to see how low the traffic counts are on a four lane corridor. For example US 2 from Minot to Devils Lake is a four lane divided highway with traffic volumes between 2,000 and 3,000 vehicles per day. In most of Europe you won't see any four laning unless volumes are well over 10,000 and often closer to 20,000 vehicles per day.

North Dakota has an extensive 4-lane expressway network for a state that has the population it does. I'd love to know the history of that. I'm guessing Congressional earmarks back then?

From an engineering perspective, having all of that 4-lane expressway just adds more conflict points, and adds to maintenance costs.

I know for the larger 4-lane expressway sections in SD (Aberdeen to I-29, Huron to Mitchell, Pierre to I-90), the traffic counts never justified them. It was 'economic impact' and certain politicians in the right places. Aberdeen to I-29 had the highest traffic counts, and, in my opinion, was needed.

I-90 to Pierre was the worst of them. Pierre, being the capital of SD, wanted to be "connected" to an Interstate. A complete waste of money. You can drive US 83 on that stretch and you'll be lucky to pass a handful of vehicles, and it's 30+ miles long.

[froggie]

North Dakota has an extensive 4-lane expressway network for a state that has the population it does. I'd love to know the history of that. I'm guessing Congressional earmarks back then?

I wouldn't really call it all that "extensive", even now.  Prior to the Bakken oil field development, it was pretty much 83 from Bismark to Minot AFB, 2 from Minot to Grand Forks, the 2/85 concurrency, and 52/281 concurrency, and connecting Wahpeton to I-29.  Since Bakken, all they've really added is the rest of 2 from Williston to Minot and 85 south of Williston to Watford City.