North Fork traffic may worsen next year

While a long-term solution remains elusive, residents and community leaders in and around the North Fork agree that traffic along the dusty, washboard-prone road is likely to get a lot worse next year.

The Montana Department of Transportation plans to spend summer 2017 replacing the deteriorating bridge on U.S. 2 over the South Fork — part of the main thoroughfare connecting the Flathead Valley with Glacier National Park.

The alternative route, if vacationers tire of traffic delays and wait times brought on by the construction project, points up the North Fork Road to Glacier Park’s Camas Road entrance.

Columbia Falls City Manager Susan Nicosia made clear during a Thursday morning meeting in Columbia Falls that the city intends to reap the rewards of the expected traffic diversions.

“We will be improving that signage” directing people up Nucleus Avenue and toward the North Fork, Nicosia said. “They told us we couldn’t call it ‘the free entrance,’ but we could call it ‘the scenic route.’”

Local businesses could benefit by diverting a chunk of those vacationers through the town’s main avenue, she said. Capturing more tourism dollars has long been a goal of the city, whose leaders have complained that it largely serves as a mere “pass-through town” for those headed to Glacier.

Republican state Sen. Dee Brown, who represents Columbia Falls along with the North Fork and Badrock Canyon areas, hosted the meeting in Columbia Falls to get residents and local officials thinking about how to deal with that likelihood, as well as the steady uptick in traffic the area has experienced over the years.

About 30 people attended the meeting.

“This isn’t a hearing. This is a fact-finding,” Brown said. “I’m not looking at solving this in 2016. Let’s set our sights in the distance and talk about what opportunities are available.”

In 2010, a state transportation study counted vehicles traveling through the corridor, with a daily average of 2,540 vehicles passing along Railroad Street, which runs north from Columbia Falls and turns into the North Fork Road. South of the park’s Camas entrance, the average was 480 vehicles.

Flathead County roads manager Dave Prunty said the state Department of Transportation typically recommends paving roads once traffic starts to hit 250 cars per day.

He was optimistic that the North Fork might qualify for another grant from the Federal Lands Access Program, which the county is using to fund the ongoing paving of the road up Blacktail Mountain.

The program prioritizes projects based on their benefit to recreational access to public lands. Flathead County has already won about $8 million of a total $22 million that Montana has gotten from the federal government.

That money requires matching funds from other agencies, and Prunty said the U.S. Border Patrol has indicated it would contribute money to reconstruct the road’s northernmost five miles, and the Forest Service also would contribute.

Still, local officials leading the meeting focused more on the need for more information, rather than weighing in on the possibility of paving the road, a historically controversial issue.

County Commissioner Phil Mitchell said that while he would be willing to chip in money for the grant, increasing the amount of money the county spends annually to maintain the North Fork Road is off the table.

The county already spends a disproportionate amount of money, he said, given the approximately 75 full-time and 300 seasonal residents that occupy the remote North Fork area. Many county residents and environmental advocates have opposed paving the road over the years, but the choking dust and deterioration of the road surface require it to be regraded and oiled twice per year.

“I’m not going to spend more and more money [on the road] without looking at paving,” Mitchell said, but noted that paving could increase traffic and the speeds at which motorists drive on the road.

“At the end of the day, tourists have decided to come up the North Fork for tourism reasons,” he said. “Ten years from now, what should this road look like? ... It’s not just for the tourists, and it’s not just for the residents.”

While no specific policy proposals were discussed at the meeting, Brown said she would work with her colleagues at the state level to get an updated traffic count.

Prunty said the county could find out whether its grant application was successful as early as this summer.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.