Residential streets shouldn’t be bypassed

Woodland Park sits at the north end of Woodland Avenue. Now a picturesque place for locals and tourists to gather and play year-round, it was originally the town’s only wooded area according to the Montana National Register Sign Program. Children didn’t gather. Families stayed away. That’s because over 100 years ago mosquitos were legion and transients — hopping on and off the freight trains constantly moving through the town — scared residents away. When the railroad stopped bisecting the city, the surrounding area — anchored by the Conrad Mansion — became one of the primary residential spaces of the city and the park morphed into a gathering place for friends and family. 

In fact, that is what Woodland Avenue has long been — a place for friends and families. This street isn’t for or made up by the rich, as Mr. Rold wrote in his Aug. 11 letter to the editor. It is for everyone. 

Deer cross the road at all times of the day to eat crab apples out of the residents’ yards. Ducks cross to visit human friends who have been inviting them to their decks for decades. Kids ride their bikes on a road with limited bike paths. Joggers traverse the street at all times of the day. Neighbors cross back and forth, sharing herbs and produce they’ve grown in their back yards. And everyone on this street welcomes the countless tourists — who bring vital revenue to the city — wanting to experience just a taste of the splendor that is Kalispell — historic and present day. Woodland Avenue isn’t just part of a residential community. It is a residential community.  

Kalispell has grown. Some of it as planned and some as a product of being a quaint small town in a beautiful part of the country. But we are still a small town and residents of it. While it may seem expedient to continually create traffic relief for thoroughfares like U.S. 2 and U.S. 93, destroying our residential communities and downtown to do so is reckless and shortsighted. Creating a bypass to connect U.S. 2 and Willow Glen Drive would only result in the erosion of our residential neighborhoods.

We should be focusing on finding ways to move traffic outside of and around our town; not cut through it. And streets like Woodland Avenue (and Sixth Avenue West, East Oregon Street and every other street accommodating more homes than businesses) should be preserved as safe places for humans and animals to live and thrive.  

That is the only way to maintain the draw that brought us all here in the first place.  

James Hinchey, Kalispell