New bypass plan may help busy intersection

The last thing the Flathead Valley needed was to move agonizing traffic jams from Kalispell's Main and Idaho north to U.S. 93 and West Reserve Drive.

That's the way things were heading under a Kalispell bypass plan that was unveiled last year. But to the credit of the transportation officials and consultants involved with the bypass project, there has been a somewhat creative response to new information and input.

Traffic data collected along the bypass route clearly showed that throngs of vehicles would be funneled north to clash with increasing traffic in the fast-growing commercial area at U.S. 93 and West Reserve.

Add to that mix a new high school and growing residential subdivisions to the west, an approved retail plaza to the south (which alone would add 21,000 vehicle trips a day) and a potential mall to the northeast, and you have - in the terms of traffic planners - "unacceptable levels of service" at Reserve and U.S. 93.

So those involved rightly put on the brakes and steered the project toward some alternatives.

The new recommended design comes with overpasses, a loop road to the east of U.S. 93 and a connection route west of the highway leading toward the new high school.

The new plan comes with a higher cost, of course. The old, simple bypass plan was expected to cost $28 million, but that would simply be a waste of money considering that traffic problems would be increased rather than alleviated.

Depending on how many features are included, the new plan could cost close to $80 million. But the first $30 million of that may be on the way thanks to action in Congress this week prompted by Sen. Max Baucus.

The best part about the most recent bypass plan, however, is that it is not set in stone.

And that's the way it should be. As time passes and perhaps more information comes to light, this plan should be tweaked and adjusted in every fashion possible to produce the best results. This is the type of project that should be built for the future, without requiring the construction of major alternative routes in 20 or 30 years.

To be sure, it is not likely that transportation experts (or motorists) would consider the revised plan to be a perfect fix for pending traffic patterns around Kalispell.

No matter what the arrangement of roadways, the U.S. 93/Reserve junction promises to be an adventure for drivers as traffic counts soar.

But current proposals are better than pursuing a project that would produce nothing more than a malfunction junction.