The Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes have been awarded a $4.739 million federal grant to improve safety at high-risk locations on the Wind River Reservation and off-reservation trust land.
The Wind River Inter-Tribal Council Department of Transportation and Shoshone & Arapaho Public Works Authority will use the funding for improvements on three roadway segments, five curves and 10 intersections identified in a transportation safety plan’s high-injury network, according to the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT), which announced the award October 30.
The work is expected to include overhead lighting, chevron signs, centerline and edgeline rumble strips, wider edgelines, upgraded signs and pavement markings, flashing stop signs, and converting one intersection to a through stop. The project is intended to reduce lane-departure, run-off-road and rural intersection crashes. Loren A. Smith Jr., the U.S. Department of Transportation’s deputy assistant secretary for transportation policy, said it will use a “Safe System approach” and “FHWA Proven Safety Countermeasures.”
From 2019 through 2023, the reservation had 2,220 crashes, including 31 fatal crashes and 67 serio...