New turn lane being built at Fairmont Road
Work began Tuesday to add a left-turn lane at the intersection of Montana 35 and Fairmont Road.
Crews from the Montana Department of Transportation began shoulder work this week in preparation for adding a left-turn lane on Montana 35 onto Fairmont Road, according to a press release from the department.
The intersection also will get a left-turn lane from the highway onto Amdahl Lane, Kalispell area traffic engineer James Freyholtz said.
While crews are at work, drivers can expect the speed limit to drop to 35 mph, down from 55 mph. The project is expected to take about a month.
The department opted to add the turn lanes to address accidents and increase safety at the intersection, Freyholtz said.
Some area residents were excited to hear about the new left-turn lanes, but also said they hoped the Department of Transportation wouldn’t stop there. Turning from Fairmont Road onto Montana 35 also needs to be addressed, they said.
“It won’t resolve the issue of turning toward town from Fair-Mont-Egan School, but it will certainly make it more safe coming from Bigfork and coming onto Fairmont,” Fair-Mont-Egan Principal Christine Schmidt-Anthony said.
Still, she and school clerk Susan Clanton were thrilled to hear about the turn lanes.
“Very exciting sums it up,” Schmidt-Anthony said.
Some school officials and other area residents, particularly parents who make daily trips to the school, have been trying to convince the transportation department to reinstall a traffic light at the intersection.
There were signals there from April 2008 until October 2009 to help manage traffic after the Old Steel Bridge was closed and a new bridge was under construction across the Flathead River.
When the bridge was completed in September 2009, the signals no longer were needed, according to a transportation department study.
But some area residents and school staff disagreed. Morning traffic made turning onto Fairmont Road from Montana 35 difficult. Trying to turn onto the highway from Fairmont Road was even harder, they said.
School officials said the problem was worsened because there is no bus service in the district, so nearly all parents drive their children to school.
An April 2009 accident at a nearby intersection helped fuel the residents’ fears. Six-year-old Hanna Cini, a first-grader at Fair-Mont-Egan, died after her mother’s car was struck from behind while she was trying to turn from the highway onto Montford Road, just east of the Fairmont intersection.
After the signals were removed last year, several Fair-Mont-Egan residents signed a petition asking the Department of Transportation to reinstall the signal.
Kristin LeClercq, who drives her children to and from the school, has advocated reinstalling the signal and improving safety along that section of the highway — not just at the Fairmont Road intersection.
“It’s very exciting that construction is beginning on the left-turn lane, and I applaud the efforts of MDT in making this happen. It is a huge step in the right direction,” she said in an e-mail to the Inter Lake.
“However, the end goal is safety for all those driving this stretch of Highway 35, not just those turning left onto Fairmont. There are still many community members whose concerns regarding access to the highway from Fairmont and surrounding side roads will not be addressed by the turn lane.”
When the traffic signals were removed from the intersection, many people told the transportation department they were glad the lights were gone, Freyholtz told the Inter Lake in November 2009.
The mixed response prompted the department to study whether the signals should remain at the intersection permanently. The intersection did not meet any of the eight possible criteria, based on national standards, that could have shown a signal was necessary there, Freyholtz told the Inter Lake last year.
The study did, however, suggest a left-turn lane might be useful at the intersection, he said.
Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.