QUESTION: Who takes care of the infrastructure beneath the state highways, as the highway goes through several small towns?

I know that the state manages the actual highways themselves, but who takes care of the heavier load limit damage of the cities’ infrastructures that pass under the highway? So many of the small towns’ infrastructures are old.

ANSWER: Right off the bat, we’re obliged to take a deep bow and say that this question is really pretty darn insightful, Susan.

This is a neat inquiry because anyone can see — and gripe about — what’s going on with a part of the road they’re driving over while feeling some teeth loosen.

But actually having the foresight to question what’s happening underneath, and whether or not it might become expensive (or dangerous), means you’re pretty sharp.

Or a contractor on the lookout for an RFP.

Assuming it’s not the latter, we only need to reach that well-known concrete mixer himself, Justin Wuest, to explain who has responsibility for the infrastructure beneath our state roads.

OK, so Wuest is actually a design engineer for the Idaho Transportation Department’s District 1, and not really handling the concrete in person. But we’re sure he could, if necessary.

“In almost all circumstances, the responsibility is ours,” Wuest said. “If it’s a structure over a stream, for instance, almost certainly we drove the pillars and we’re taking care of maintenance.”

However, there actually can be some situations in which ITD might wind up sharing fixes to infrastructure problems.

“Maybe with a railroad, which has the right of way where there’s a problem,” Wuest said. “Or we might have something with a city — perhaps a broken water main or an issue like that — where we’d need to work with another agency to solve the problem.

“But as a rule, we design and build these roads, so we take care of them.”

Wuest agreed with our questioner that some of the infrastructure supporting state thoroughfares is getting a bit older, and that occasionally such situations have to be addressed.

“Some of the roads built quite a while ago do not conform to the standards we have now,” Wuest said. “A few older roads have steeper slopes (alongside pavement and shoulder), situations we wouldn’t allow these days.

“In those cases, you can have slides that come from private property. Maybe it’s a ‘fill slope’ that fails. We try to acquire that land and work through it that way.”

Wuest noted that roads constructed now (or brought up to current standards) generally are designed to avoid dangerous slopes and the slides they can create.

“Technology and experience now allows us to provide the public with better, safer roads,” he said, “and if there’s a problem, it’s on us to fix it.”