Scarsella Bros. Inc., of Seattle, has been awarded a $23.9 million contract by the Washington state Department of Transportation to widen a 5.5-mile stretch of Interstate 90 between the Argonne Road and Sullivan Road interchanges.


The work, which is expected to begin in early August, will include adding a lane in each direction to the four-lane freeway and replacing its asphalt surface with concrete, says DOT spokesman Al Gilson.


The concrete pavement, although significantly more expensive to construct, is more resilient to damage from studded tires, he says. The DOT has blamed studded tires for problematic ruts on I-90.


The project is east of a section of I-90 between the Sprague Avenue and Argonne interchanges where a widening project was completed last year. The DOT plans eventually to widen the freeway to three lanes all the way to the Washington-Idaho border.


In the Argonne-to-Sullivan project, traffic will be redirected in a way that is similar to the rerouting done during the Sprague-to-Argonne project, Gilson says. The number of lanes wont be reduced, but theyll be moved to accommodate the construction work.


The first thing people will see is the construction of two temporary lanes, Gilson says. Well shift traffic onto that, build on one side (of the freeway) at a time, putting all traffic onto the other side.


He says, Traffic moved perfectly during that last job, and it should be the same for this one.


The DOT estimates that, once the entire Spokane-to-Idaho widening project is completed, there will be zero hours of congestion a day through the year 2010 and four hours of congestion a day by 2020. To measure hours of congestion, the DOT defines congestion as not being able to drive at the posted speed limit over a particular stretch of highway. The minutes of time that congestion occurs during a 24-hour period are added together to arrive at the number of daily congestion hours.


The average afternoon travel speeds in 2010 and 2020 would be 65 miles per hour and 41 miles per hour, respectively.


Without the work, the DOT estimates that congestion would have averaged four hours a day in 2010 and 11 hours a day in 2020. Average afternoon travel speeds in 2010 and 2020 would have been 50 miles per hour and 27 miles per hour, respectively.


The states so-called Nickel Funding Package, a 5-cent fuel tax that went into effect July 1, will fund the widening project, he says.


The work will be completed near the end of 2005, says Bob Scarsella, vice president of Scarsella Bros.


Scarsella Bros. currently is involved in a controversial road project on U.S. Highway 95 in Idaho that includes building 19 miles of roadway above Mica Creek and Mica Bay on Lake Coeur dAlene. Residents of Mica Bay claim that the contractor and the Idaho Transportation Department are responsible for spilling several tons of soil into the lake.


Scarsella says, though, that the I-90 widening project is dissimilar to the work being done in Idaho.


Its a totally different job, Scarsella says. There are no stream or wetland issues along I-90. (The work in Idaho) was designed over a pretty sensitive area. Its tough to fit in a road over a creek.


Scarsella adds that his company has done a number of road projects in the Inland Northwest successfully since Scarsella Bros. was founded in 1945.


Were not strangers to that area at all.