Residents weigh in on future of vintage bridge
A crowd of Bigfork residents and state transportation officials met Tuesday to discuss whether to repair or replace the town’s century-old steel bridge to ensure the crossing meets safety standards.
Project Engineer Kathy Harris with KJL engineering said the town’s one-lane bridge over the Swan River had worked well for 104 years.
“Congratulations for embedding it into your community. But it’s 104 years old — it’s wearing out,” Harris told the gathering of more than 60 people. “It could fail, collapse, or for public safety reasons it could potentially be closed.”
The Tuesday night open house at Bigfork Elementary School was part of the Montana Department of Transportation and Flathead County’s initial stages of a $300,000 feasibility study of potential improvements to the bridge.
THE MEETING was the first of four possible public discussions about the bridge.
While updates are needed, Bigfork residents worried the study could result in their postcard-like bridge being replaced with a modern structure.
The bridge is owned by the county and currently has a three-ton load limit — the lowest limit acceptable before closure.
Harris said there is federal money that could be available to assist with repairing or replacing the bridge, although the money could not be secured until designs are completed, according to Montana Department of Transportation officials.
“But going into the future, that funding is not guaranteed. It’s there now, but it may not be there if we wait five years or ten years,” she said.
As Harris talked, images of failed bridges similar to the Swan River Bridge’s condition flashed on a PowerPoint presentation.
Architects around the room held pieces of the bridge’s rust that had fallen off during a recent inspection.
In one corner of the room were posters showing other historic bridges the company had rehabilitated.
On the other side of the room was a list of priorities the Department of Transportation had established. Participants were given dot stickers— three blue and one red — and told to place the red sticker on their top priority and the blues on other features they wanted to prioritize.
“We have not made decisions yet, this is the beginning and you’re a pretty important part of that,” Harris said.
Marlene Gray, a Bigfork resident of 13 years, placed her red dot on the one-lane bridge category.
“This bridge shows the character of our town,” Gray said. “We like that we’re a small community, and the one-lane helps slow you down. Life goes so fast. It’s good to wait a moment.”
Other popular categories included maintaining the bridge’s appearance and the reduced speed. Improving the structural integrity ranked fourth with just over a dozen blue dots.
Categories that looked bare included maintaining the dimensions and improving the clearances for large vehicles. The section that called for two lanes received no public support.
Karin Henion, a Bigfork resident since 1978, said she wanted to keep traffic limited on the bridge and liked its current weight limit.
“As a town, we’ve seen a lot of change,” Henion said. “We don’t need big trucks or RVs going over that bridge. It’s a peaceful place, and that’s how we like it.”
Eve Lefcourt said she moved to town nine months ago from San Francisco. She passed through Bigfork on a road trip with her son and after returning home she and her husband decided to move there. She said one of the first images she showed her husband was the bridge decorated for Christmas.
“That bridge is a part of the brand of Bigfork, much like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco — though there’s a different dollar amount and population size tied to it. It’s important,” Lefcourt said.
Other Bigfork residents talked about the Kearney Rapids Bridge outside Bigfork that crossed the Swan River and was replaced with a concrete crossing.
Wade Salyards with the Montana Department of Transportation said the department was trying to move very carefully with this project. He said the detailed process of the Bigfork bridge meeting was not the typical way the department handled road repair.
“We’re really aiming to avoid any backlash with this project by including the community from the very beginning,” he said. “We knew this was going to be a very passionate topic for Bigfork because of the history, and we want that to be part of the planning process.”
Upcoming meetings will be announced later this month.
Comments about the future of the bridge will be accepted until May 12 and may be submitted by mail to Ed Toavs, Montana Department of Transportation Missoula District Office, P.O. Box 7039, Missoula, MT 59807-7039 or online at www.mdt.mt.gov/mdt/comment_form.shtml.
For more information go to www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/bigforkbridge.
Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.