Overview
The Idaho Transportation Department held its fourth round of public meetings for a Planning and Environmental Linkages study to develop and evaluate alternatives to improve the state highway and local roadway system within the Rathdrum Prairie.
The project team is currently comparing 13 alternatives as high-level ideas for potential transportation solutions to understand their relative benefits and impacts. This comparison will help inform which alternatives will advance to the next phase of the screening process. The effort focuses on optimizing existing corridors and exploring potential new routes to mitigate congestion, enhance connectivity, and improve mobility throughout the region for years to come.
What is a Planning and Environmental Linkages Study?
The PEL process considers environmental, community and economic goals early on while planning future projects.
This process is outlined by the Federal Highway Administration and weighs:
- Transportation issues and priorities
- Environmental resources and concerns
- Stakeholder and public concerns
What’s next?
The project team will continue screening analysis to develop Level 3 alternatives, which will likely be a small handful of concepts, and prepare a report on the planning study findings. A final public meeting will be held to present the remaining alternatives and finalize the PEL study. These remaining alternatives will be prepared to move into the next step of the environmental approval process, called the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA for short.
Recommendations from the PEL study, and the public and agency input received, may be adopted, or incorporated into future NEPA studies.
Funding
Currently, funding has been allocated to complete the PEL Study, but the NEPA process and any future construction projects that are recommended out of the study are unfunded. ITD may explore options for state, federal, or grant funding available to initiate these projects in the coming years. ITD also intends to work closely as a partner with our neighboring local transportation agencies to help support improvements that will serve to enhance connectivity and mobility across the larger regional transportation network.
More detailed information, including materials and resources presented at previous public meetings, is available below!
Community involvement
ITD has hosted 4 rounds of public meetings for the Rathdrum Prairie PEL to inform the community and collect feedback as possible transportation solutions alternatives are developed and refined. Additional public meetings will be held later this year as the PEL study enters its final phases.
Timeline
Initially launched in 2022, the Rathdrum Prairie PEL Study is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
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2022
PEL study was initiated.
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Spring-Fall 2023
ITD launched public involvement for the PEL by collecting input via workshops, a working group, and an initial public meeting to identify issues and explore solutions.
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Summer 2024
ITD screened over 50 concepts and shared Level 1 transportation ideas at June 2024 public meetings for further refinement.
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Fall 2024
The 50 Level 1 concepts were screened and either eliminated, or consolidated, into 13 Level 2 alternatives that were presented to the public.
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Fall 2025
Public meetings to review Level 2 alternatives and recommendations on alternatives to move to Level 3 screening.
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Spring 2026
Final public meetings to present remaining alternatives and finalize the PEL study.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Rathdrum Prairie Area Transportation Study is a planning project focused on identifying ways to improve travel in the Rathdrum Prairie area. The goal is to make transportation safer, reduce traffic congestion, improve connections between places, and make it easier and more reliable to get around —both now and in the future.
This study is important because it looks at several ways to improve how people travel in and around the Rathdrum Prairie area. It helps us understand where roads can be safer, where traffic is getting worse, and what upgrades are needed as Kootenai County continues to grow. The study also reviews possible new road connections to give drivers more options and reduce congestion. By sharing your feedback, you help us choose solutions that support safety, growth, and everyday travel for the whole community.
A Planning and Environmental Linkages study is a way for transportation agencies to look at an entire area and understand its travel and mobility needs as a whole. It also helps plan future transportation projects by considering environmental, community and economic goals early in the planning process. Our previous work on this study was called the Rathdrum Prairie PEL Study. Today we use the name “Rathdrum Prairie Area Transportation Study, but it is the same process and all working towards the same goal of identifying potential solutions to improve travel, safety and mobility across the region. Outlined by the Federal Highway Administration, the PEL process looks at:
- Transportation issues and priorities
- Environmental resources and concerns
- Stakeholder and public input
Recommendations from this study, shaped by feedback from the public and agencies, could move to the next step: a federal review called the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. This review is required before major transportation projects can be built.
Level 2 alternatives are possible transportation solutions that are compared to each other to understand their benefits and impacts. These alternatives are the most likely to need review under NEPA. Comparing them helps decide which ones should move forward to the Level 3 screening process. Public input also plays an important role in choosing which alternatives advance.
Level 2 screening is a comparative process. That means each alternative is reviewed and compared to one another to understand how well it performs, what impacts and benefits it may have, and how easy it would be to build.
Step 1: Performance
We looked at safety, congestion, travel time, efficiency, network redundancy (having more than one route to a destination), and opportunities for new or improved walking, biking or transit connections or corridors. East-west and north-south travel patterns were considered. Alternatives that don’t perform well on their own may still move forward if they improve results when combined with others.
Step 2: Impacts and Benefits
We evaluated how each alternative supports the study’s goals, including how well it fits with local and regional plans, its effects on environmental resources, and its impacts on communities, neighborhoods and infrastructure. This step helped identify trade-offs between performance and potential impacts.
Step 3: Implementation
We considered how challenging each alternative would be to build considering things like traffic impacts during construction and costs compared to other options.
Each Level 2 alternative that moves forward is reviewed to see if it can work on its own or if it needs to be combined with other ideas to solve a specific transportation problem. If it’s combined, the alternative will be refined and included in the Level 3 scenarios. From there, the most promising options will be selected for detailed analysis and discussed further as part of a strategy for next steps, including NEPA.
Since 2022, ITD and the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization have gathered input from community members, stakeholders and agencies through interviews, workshops and public meetings. Each round of public meetings has helped the team better understand community priorities as alternatives were developed and screened. The feedback received has helped to shape the screening criteria, alternatives and recommendations you see today. Some alternatives were originally suggested and drawn out by the public and stakeholders at previous meetings. The September 2025 public and online meetings marked the fourth round for this study. During these meetings, ITD shared what it learned from its evaluation and gave early recommendations about which alternatives could move forward.
Contact the project team
For questions or comments about this project, please contact the project team at info@rathdrumprairiepel.com or (208) 772-1200.
Join the project email list!
Stay up to date on the Rathdrum Prairie Area Transportation Study as we work to identify transportation issues and potential solutions across the Rathdrum Prairie.