Don't quit on U.S. 93 bypass

$93 million for the U.S. 93 bypass?

That's a figure that's hard to fathom for the long-planned eight-mile-long route around the west side of Kalispell.

Design changes, higher traffic projections and more accurate cost estimates produced the mind-numbing estimate of $93.5 million for the bypass - and that figure doesn't include another $8 million to $10 million for right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation.

The highway department can afford the $93.5 million - but at that price it would be the only construction project in this area for five years.

That's not an appealing option.

Fortunately, highway officials are already paring back the design to produce a more palatable construction cost.

One alternative would peg the road job at $58 million and still maintain most critical features of the bypass. Perhaps removing a few more $6 million interchanges could bring the dollar total even lower.

The main aim of the western bypass - which has been studied and debated for more than 50 years - has been to divert vehicles around Kalispell's downtown core, relieving congestion and truck traffic.

That's appealing, of course, but the possibility also exists that the bypass will create an unsettling vehicular vortex at the north end of the bypass, where traffic from some 2 million square feet of stores, a new high school, growing housing developments and three major roads will converge in one spot.

Most of those factors didn't exist when the route for the bypass was decided years ago.

But delay is not an option. An alternate north-south highway is still needed, and the bypass corridor may be one of the last viable paths to accomplish that.

Our advice to the highway planners: Build a scaled-back bypass at the most reasonable cost (as far below $93 million or even $58 million as possible) and then get to work on other transportation challenges posed by a rapidly growing valley.

Those challenges include finishing U.S. 93 improvements between Kalispell and Whitefish, improving West Reserve Drive (now a key route to the burgeoning commercial centers along U.S. 93) and maybe working toward another east-west arterial between U.S. 2 and U.S. 93.

Growth is here and there's more ahead, so we need the transportation system to deal with it. And as we've plainly learned from the bypass project, delay doesn't decrease the problem; it just increases the cost.