Bullock: 'Petty politics' halting progress on bypass

It has been more than 20 years in the making, so state officials say they’re ready to complete the Kalispell U.S. 93 bypass.

But standing on a hilltop overlooking the grassy corridor that is the proposed roadway, Montana Department of Transportation Director Mike Tooley said Congress has stymied the whole thing.

“This creates uncertainty, the way it is, to complete projects like the Kalispell bypass,” Tooley said.

Tooley joined Gov. Steve Bullock, local officials and others Tuesday in north Kalispell to affirm support for the bypass. They met atop a hill near the Four Mile Drive dead end, just east of the project area.

The refrain was that lack of a transportation package from Congress is all that stands in the way of a completed bypass.

Bullock decried the series of stopgap deals that has sustained federal highway funding in recent years. He said that as Congress stalls, state roads wait.

“We can’t get this done if politics and short-term thinking holds up the federal dollar,” Bullock said.

The Montana Department of Transportation has secured the land rights for the final leg of the bypass, and $100 million has already been sunken into the project. The remaining section would connect Old Reserve Drive and West Idaho Street.

The department hoped to seek bids this month on the final bypass section, which is estimated at around $40 million. The final product would be an eight-mile bypass, including expansion of the existing southern half of U.S. 93 Alternate Route.

The project also would coincide with a city effort to extend Four Mile Drive to Stillwater Road.

Ed Toavs, Department of Transportation district administrator, said the Kalispell bypass is in a unique spot among the state’s highway projects. He said that his department wants to award a contract for the full stretch this year.

 Not only is the bypass more than half-finished and ready to go, but Toavs said certain conditions allow for as much as $6 million in savings to build the entire remaining segment versus breaking it into further phases. For that, the department is prepared to place a substantial amount of its 2015 resources into the bypass.

Without federal money, everything else down the priority line gets delayed.

“Our entire core program for Western Montana gets delayed,” Toavs said.

Montana relies on 87 cents from the federal government for every transportation dollar it spends, according to Tooley. That’s how officials end up holding their breaths for Congressional action, which recently has come in strings of short-term solutions. Bullock called them “Band-Aid” provisions.

More broadly, officials say it makes the task of long-term planning a difficult one for the transportation department. While the state would like to have five or 10-year plans for transportation projects, Tooley said the stopgap provisions lead to sharp prioritizing amid uncertain financing.

The Kalispell bypass is one of many top-tier projects on the state’s wish list, and Bullock said those can’t be planned for with short-term bills.

“The expectation is we ought to be able to plan for the future,” he said.

Bullock avoided talk of party politics on Tuesday, sticking to the idea of Congress versus state projects. But John Fuller, district director for U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., said that there is a partisan game going on in Washington, D.C.

Fuller said that while there has been support in both parties for transportation funding, he pointed to the party that was in charge of the U.S. Senate prior to this year.

“The reason for all those continuing resolutions was that the governor’s party was in charge of Congress,” he said.

WHILE THE purported drama in Washington play out, local officials are still waiting to see their 20-year goal realized. The city has even sent representatives to the capital to lobby for, among other things, transportation money for the bypass.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Kalispell Chamber of Commerce President Joe Unterreiner looked over the rapidly developed U.S. 93 corridor — and the road projects that have created access. He said that the bypass is the latest example.

“This is such a critical piece of infrastructure to keep all of that moving,” Unterreiner said.

He added that diverting some of the Main Street traffic to a bypass would go a long way for the city’s effort with the Chamber to revitalize downtown Kalispell.

For that and other projects, he joined the other officials in calling for long-term transportation funding.

Now that the Montana Department of Transportation can’t put the bypass out for bid this month, Toavs said highway officials are looking at late August. That would put traffic on the new bypass by spring 2017.

Reporter Matt Hudson may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mhudson@dailyinterlake.com.