U.S. 93 may lose famed Kalispell couplet

Rerouting U.S. 93 to the east side of the Flathead County Courthouse will be considered as the state Department of Transportation moves forward with design options for a future highway rebuild.

State transportation officials met with representatives of the county and city of Kalispell last week during a scoping session aimed at giving the state’s consulting firm, Robert Peccia & Associates, information to begin the design process.

“Basically we wanted to clearly outline and define the roles and responsibilities for the consultants,” said Shane Stack, a district pre-construction engineer for the Department of Transportation. “We’re having [the consultants] look at two different options — an eastern route and a couplet system. They’ll put a scope of services together based on that meeting.”

The county commissioners favor shifting all four lanes of U.S. 93 east of the courthouse to create a pedestrian-friendly county campus.

“It would eliminate a huge public safety issue,” County Administrator Mike Pence said.

There is foot traffic back and forth across U.S. 93 between the main courthouse and the county’s other three buildings to the west: the Earl Bennett Building, Justice Center and Courthouse West.

The pedestrian safety issue will get worse as the county grows, Pence noted.

“The commissioners feel the east route should be given consideration,” he said. “We ought to try to do it the best way possible.”

Earlier this year, however, Montana Department of Transportation Missoula District Administrator Ed Toavs told the commissioners it may be too costly to shift the highway to the east.

Toavs reiterated the state’s desire to keep working toward a design plan for the widening of U.S. 93 around the Flathead County Courthouse in case extra federal funding becomes available.

U.S. 93 narrows to a single lane each way around the courthouse and is the last stretch of highway between Whitefish and Somers that needs to be converted to four lanes.

Buying the properties on the east side of the courthouse would be a financial challenge.

The Kalispell Foot and Ankle Clinic and McGarvey, Heberling, Sullivan & McGarvey law office would need to be removed to accommodate four lanes of traffic.

“The issue we have is that we’d have to prove necessity to buy the properties,” Toavs told the commissioners in March. “And if there’s another alternative where we can avoid that,” it may be more feasible to rebuild the existing split highway.

Pence agreed that obtaining the property would be a challenge, but stressed that pedestrian safety is a paramount concern. He said he has witnessed many near-collisions when vehicles stop abruptly to allow pedestrians to cross the highway.

Kalispell Planning Director Tom Jentz said the Kalispell City Council hasn’t taken an official position about which alternative to support. Senior Planner Kevin LeClair attended the joint scoping session to represent the city’s concerns.

“We offered another alternative of maintaining two lanes of traffic,” Jentz said. “It can be on east side ... one of the concerns was we need to consider [whether] our main street is a main street or a federal highway. It’s how you manage Main Street.”

The U.S. 93 bypass will be completed within the next couple of years, and one argument in favor of preserving the couplet design is to funnel more through traffic to the bypass.

“This is an opportunity to reconsider what’s going on,” Jentz said. “We’d love to have options on the table and work with MDT.

“At stake really is, is the downtown a federal highway and should it be managed as such?” he continued. “When we answer that question, then what should the design be?”

The city is in the early states of developing a downtown plan, Jentz said, and that effort will require a clear vision of how U.S. 93 will impact the downtown corridor.

The couplet rebuild likely is still a few years out, but if “grab bag” money — extra federal funding that becomes available — were earmarked for this area, the couplet could be an ideal project, according to Toavs.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.