What's happening with the bypass?

The Daily Inter Lake

Updates planned Wednesday at Kalispell meeting

The latest in a series of public meetings on Kalispell's U.S. 93 bypass takes place Wednesday at the WestCoast Outlaw Hotel.

A variety of issues will be addressed during the meeting, with updates provided on the bypass funding situation and on the status of the environmental re-evaluation.

People will also have an opportunity to review the original goals of the bypass and indicate whether they're still appropriate.

"The goals were fairly general. They dealt with issues like safety and reducing traffic in downtown Kalispell," said Jason Giard with Stelling Engineers, the Great Falls firm working on the bypass design. "The biggest thing we hope to accomplish at this meeting is to check the goals and try to set the criteria for prioritizing the project."

Montana Department of Transportation officials previously have indicated that the bypass west of U.S. 93 might have to be built in phases. Once the goals and

prioritization criteria are set, they will be used to develop a phasing proposal that says which segments of the project should be built first.

"There won't be a lot of discussion about that at this meeting," Giard said, but the public will have an opportunity to review and comment on the phasing proposal once it's completed later this summer.

The re-evaluation of the original, 1994 environmental impact study for the bypass is almost finished. No new significant impacts have been identified; federal highway officials could sign off on the document in the near future.

Wednesday's meeting begins at 7 p.m. with an introductory presentation followed by a question-and-answer period.

The Technical Advisory Committee, which reviews transportation proposals in the Kalispell area, will meeting on Tuesday to discuss this same issue. That meeting is at 1:30 p.m. in the conference room of the Department of Transportation's office at 85 Fifth Ave. E.N. in Kalispell.