Four Mile Drive may be added to road list

Kalispell’s Technical Advisory Committee on Tuesday will try to pick the city’s next major road project for slowly accumulating federal urban highway money.

In September, committee members representing the city, county and state of Montana whittled 15 unfunded priority projects in the Kalispell Area Transportation Plan down to just four or five that remain up for consideration. Those include:

• Improving West Reserve Drive from U.S. 93 to Whitefish Stage Road and improving the Whitefish Stage intersection to reduce congestion.

• Improving Whitefish Stage Road from East Idaho Street to West Reserve Drive.

• Extending Grandview Drive east to Whitefish Stage Road to create a new east-west connection.

• Improving Willow Glen Drive and building an extension from Conrad Drive to U.S. 2 to function as a bypass on Kalispell’s east side.

But a new road project is expected to enter the discussion at Tuesday’s meeting: Extending Four Mile Drive half a mile to Stillwater Road with a new bridge over the future path of the U.S. 93 Alternate Route.

Four Mile Drive originally was slated to be built using money raised by Kalispell’s transportation impact fee program. But the City Council voted last year to get rid of those fees,, which had raised nowhere near enough money.

More recently, the City Council wants Kidsports to raise money to finish Four Mile Drive in exchange for the city buying a $2.3 million school trust land easement for its youth athletic complex located along the road.

The Montana Department of Transportation suggests Four Mile Drive be built with a bridge, an expensive proposition for a nonprofit youth sports organization being asked to build a new city road.

But if Four Mile Drive is built with a bridge from the start, it could accommodate the northern half of the alternate route when it gets built through the area and not have to be ripped apart and closed off for construction when that time comes.

“We are going to make a recommendation to look at Four Mile Drive and have urban highway funds assist in that construction,” Kalispell Planning Director Tom Jentz said. “Not to do the whole half-mile, but to assist in the construction and cover at least the bridge portion.”

The next phase of the bypass planned to be built is from the intersection of U.S. 93 and West Reserve Drive south to Reserve Loop. Future work would proceed south from there in several phases as funding allows.

“The hope is that if we can get the Four Mile Drive bridge in, that first phase would take [the alternate route] all the way to Four Mile Drive. If we already have the bridge deck in place, that’s a natural place to stop,” Jentz said. “And the more we can get built, the greater impetus there is to get it finished.”

Four Mile Drive has always been planned to have a bridge over the alternate route and a traffic interchange.

Building the northern half of the alternate route is expected to cost more than $30 million. Several years after the alternate route’s southern half opened, none of the northern half is funded.

With some federal urban highway money already saved up and Kidsports working to raise its contribution, Kalispell could build Four Mile Drive with a bridge in short order compared to the other projects that are being considered. Those could take up to a decade or longer to pay for, Jentz said.

But there is a chance Kalispell would spend that federal urban highway money only to find itself with a nice new bridge over nothing for some time.

“That is why we have  a committee working on this and sounder minds will come and debate the appropriateness of that,” Jentz said of the Four Mile Drive proposal.

KALISPELL GETS about $600,000 in federal urban highway money a year. The money is allocated based on population and the total could change as Montana’s urban area boundary maps are redrawn after the last census.

The money has paid for two Kalispell road projects in the past 30 years: A reconstruction of Main Street in 1984 and a reconstruction of Meridian Road in 2007.

Kalispell had to borrow against its future federal urban highway allocations to complete Meridian Road but started accruing the money again in 2010 and now has about $1.6 million available.

Tuesday’s Technical Advisory Committee meeting starts at 1:30 p.m. in the second-floor conference room of the Montana Department of Transportation building at 85 Fifth Avenue East North. It is open to the public.

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.