Sun Road construction on track to finish this fall

Crews are on schedule this fall to finish paving the stretch of the Going-to-the-Sun Road under construction from Apgar to Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park. 

Paving on the road will continue daytime operations into November, weather permitting, according to the Federal Highway Administration, the agency that oversees road construction projects in Glacier Park. 

The work is part of a two-year project to replace utilities and reconstruct the road. It is the last segment of reconstruction for the full Sun Road rehabilitation project which began in 2007.

For this section of road work, the agency contracted with Brice Civil Constructors of Anchorage, Alaska, according to a newsletter from the highway administration. The Apgar to Lake McDonald Lodge section was part of the larger contract that includes the replacement of the Upper McDonald Creek Bridge, according to Neil Gaffney, spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. 

Gaffney said the completion date on the bridge work was extended to August 2024, however, this is still the estimated completion date for the Sun Road construction. 

According to an Oct. 27 newsletter from the Federal Highway Administration, paving on the road will continue daytime operations into November, weather permitting. The letter said approximately 6.8 miles of full-depth pavement has been placed on the Sun Road. 

Delays on the bridge work were partly due to required redesign work after environmental compliance and reviewing construction plans with private landowners, according to the agency’s spokesperson. 

The work is part of a series of projects. Along the Sun Road during summer 2022 and winter 2023, a utility project replaced forced sewer mains, electrical and phone lines in the roadbed, which required the road to be milled. Rehabilitation work could not be completed until the utilities work was done. As crews completed the utility project, work on the rehab project began. 

Gaffney said this was an “ambition rehabilitation project.” Because of the high level of visitation along the Sun Road, the contract obligated the project to be completed in one year, which required more of the road to be under construction than would normally be at one time. 

Typically only 2 to 3 miles of road are under construction, but the time crunch required the excavation of 9 miles of road all at once to finish in one summer. In addition, the project could not be done in smaller segments because that would have left utilities exposed. 

Gaffney said additional maintenance was required at times due to heavy traffic and weather. 

As work on the Sun Road was progressing, paving was shaping up to be completed in September. However, heavy rains from the end of August to September slowed work.

Some finishing work may need to be forced into next spring, such as striping. All project timelines are contingent on the weather.  

  The project hit a snag when the backfill used on the utility portion was the incorrect size. The material was larger than 3 inches, but the reclamation and paving work requires material to be no larger than ¾ inch minus. 

This was not a mistake by the contractor, but rather an oversight in the contract, according to the agency’s spokesperson. 

The utilities were originally designed to be placed in the road shoulder, but when the contract went out for bid prices exceeded funds reserved for the project. Moving the utilities within the road brought the cost down substantially. Rebidding took time and the detail regarding native material was overlooked in the new contract, Gaffney said.

Because the utility work was completed ahead of schedule, rehabilitation of the road started two months early, which allowed time to replace the native material. By the time paving started, the project was very close to being back on schedule, according to the agency’s spokesperson.  

North McDonald Road remains closed to all general vehicular and foot traffic. Visitors should anticipate up to 30-minute delays on sections of the Sun Road that remain open. 

The Sun Road’s alpine section closed to vehicle traffic on Oct. 15. 

Keep up with construction updates by reading monthly Federal Highway Administration newsletters: https://highways.dot.gov/federal-lands/projects/mt/pra-glac-10-45