Kalispell pushing to keep bypass alive

Kalispell is trying to make its case to Montana Transportation Commission members who recently tabled the city’s plan to build Four Mile Drive and questioned if finishing the Kalispell bypass — a project years in the making and more than half built — should remain a top priority.

The City Council on Tuesday passed a resolution affirming the need for both road projects. 

Flathead County commissioners are considering a similar resolution. And the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce is trying to organize a strong show of support from the business community.

“This is extremely important for the city,” council member Phil Guiffrida III said. 

Guiffrida, Mayor Tammi Fisher and other council members plan to drive to Helena to speak in favor of both building Four Mile Drive and finishing the Kalispell bypass at the transportation commission’s next meeting Sept. 26. 

“I hope we can help show them why it is so important we get these projects done,” Guiffrida said. “I will be traveling to Helena, and I encourage anyone who wants to ride along.”

Kalispell wants to build Four Mile Drive with its slowly accumulating share of federal urban highway money. The money is allocated to Montana’s urban areas each year based on population. Kalispell receives about $600,000 a year and has saved up more than $1 million.

The proposed project extends Four Mile Drive from U.S. 93 all the way to Stillwater Road with a bridge over the planned route of the Kalispell bypass. The bypass when it is built could then connect to that bridge with a full interchange.

Kalispell, Flathead County and the Montana Department of Transportation selected Four Mile Drive as the city’s next urban highway project in March. They plan to reaffirm that decision and identify completion of the bypass as the Kalispell area’s top transportation priority during a Kalispell Technical Advisory Committee meeting at the Red Lion Hotel Wednesday. 

Estimated to cost $3.1 million, Four Mile Drive could be designed and built in short order. Other projects in Kalispell’s transportation plan — rebuilding Whitefish Stage Road, West Reserve Drive or Willow Glen Drive or trying to build the Grandview Extension — would cost significantly more and take a decade or longer to accrue enough money for.

Four Mile Drive also serves a critical purpose, city officials have said. 

Its completion would create a new east-west connection and another route for traffic to get in and out of one of Kalispell’s most congested areas, centered around Flathead Valley Community College and the Kidsports youth athletic complex. That area of U.S. 93 carries about 35,000 vehicles a day, the second-highest urban traffic volume in Western Montana.

Design plans for the Kalispell bypass do not include a connection with Four Mile Drive. 

“So if the next phase of bypass was built first, Four Mile Drive would be severed. That leaves us with Three Mile Drive and Reserve Drive as the only western approaches into town. Not a good situation,” Kalispell Planning Director Tom Jentz said.

Montana Transportation Commission members tabled the Four Mile Drive project in July, citing unidentified concerns. That action was led by chairman Kevin Howlett of Arlee, who represents Western Montana. 

Commission members could choose not to support Four Mile Drive. In that case the project could not proceed with federal urban highway money. But they cannot pull that money away from Kalispell to spend somewhere else in the state. 

“If it’s not spent on Four Mile Drive, it would have to be spent on another project in or around Kalispell,” Jentz said.

QUESTIONS about whether finishing the Kalispell bypass should be a top transportation priority in Western Montana — also raised by Howlett — caught Kalispell and state transportation officials off-guard.

The southern half of the Kalispell bypass opened in November 2010 at a cost of almost $23 million. 

Reserve Loop opened in 2007 at a cost of about $4 million and Hutton Ranch Road opened in 2012 at a cost of about $3 million. Both are part of the northern half of the bypass road system.

Construction is ongoing for the bypass’s northernmost phase. The $6.7 million project involves a segment from the intersection of U.S. 93 and West Reserve Drive heading south and west to Reserve Loop.

Completing Four Mile Drive and rebuilding Three Mile Drive — the latter a job Montana Department of Transportation wants to complete next spring with the transportation commission’s approval — would leave only two phases needed for a fully functioning bypass: a stretch of bypass from U.S. 2 to Three Mile Drive and a segment from Three Mile Drive to Reserve Loop.

With millions of dollars already spent on design and land acquisition and that work almost complete, those last two phases of Kalispell bypass are essentially shovel-ready and could be built within a few years if things don’t falter now. 

The history of the bypass project and the proposed path forward will be part of the discussion at next week’s Kalispell Technical Advisory Committee meeting, and information shared with the transportation commission later this September.

“What we’re hoping is that the transportation commission might have not had all of the information they needed in front of them. Maybe there are some new members. We’re not sure, but we are taking this seriously,” Jentz said.

“We have a very favorable window right now to make [the bypass] happen. If we miss that window, there may be a significant amount of time before it happens.”

Pulling the plug on the Kalispell bypass or putting it on hold would be a seismic — and to many people, strange — shift in western Montana’s transportation plans. The bypass has played heavily into planning efforts to reduce truck traffic and improve pedestrian accessibility in Kalispell’s downtown, to better route traffic through and around the city and to redevelop the city’s rundown railroad corridor. 

“It seems without completion we have a road to nowhere,” Fisher said.

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