Questions that can't be bypassed

Thanks to City Council deliberations about how to incorporate Glacier Town Center into Kalispell at the north end of town, there has been a lot of focus lately on traffic on U.S. 93.

That's all well and good. But whether we put two new traffic lights just north of Reserve is not a crucial issue to most citizens, who realize that increased traffic requires increased management of traffic.

However, there is a 900-pound gorilla at the corner of Reserve and 93 which we had better stop pretending doesn't exist.

Of course, we are talking about the northern terminus of the so-called western bypass, which could dump a massive amount of traffic at one of the busiest intersections in the city and create a malfunction junction that will make a 900-pound gorilla look friendly.

This doesn't mean the bypass is a bad idea. We've long supported a bypass as a necessity for getting truck traffic past Kalispell without sending it through downtown.

But the idea of a bypass ending at Reserve is at least 10 years out of date. Reserve and 93 - with its access to Costco, Home Depot, Lowe's Target, Semitool, Glacier High School, Flathead Valley Community College, Kidsports and much more - is the last place in the world you would want to dump truck traffic.

And that's before Glacier Town Center is even built. That will add 577,000 square feet of shopping as well as more housing and a community center.

With the magnet of all those new stores at the north end of Kalispell, it won't just be trucks taking the bypass around downtown Kalispell. The road will become a preferred shortcut for destination shoppers, cutting out not just downtown but also Kalispell Center Mall. It's almost as though the original intention of the bypass, to strengthen downtown Kalispell, has been forgotten.

No one wants to talk about the unintended consequences of the bypass because years of work have gone into obtaining the initial federal funding to start the project, but it would be wise to reconsider the purpose and scope of the bypass before the money is spent on it.

Traffic consultant Dan Burden, who spent time in the Flathead last week to discuss traffic on U.S. 93 as it relates to Glacier Town Center, said the bypass's northern intersection with 93 is already at "crash condition" even before it is built.

He recommends extending the bypass to a point much farther north and possibly west so that traffic avoiding downtown would also skip the commercial development around Reserve. That makes sense since the Kalispell city limits are now three miles north of Reserve.

In addition, he advises that a two-lane bypass would be sufficient to handle the truck traffic which wants faster routes around urban congestion, but would not invite tourists and other potential shoppers to skip Kalispell altogether. Since the two-lane roadway would be cheaper than the planned four-lane bypass, it would free up some money for the extension as well.

Ultimately, the logical alternative might be to create a 93 West Bypass that led not just past Kalispell but also past Whitefish. No one expects that to happen tomorrow, but we also shouldn't settle for a solution that is worse than the problem it was meant to solve.