Roundabouts, resurfacing on state’s road to-do list

Summertime is sure to bring two things to the Flathead Valley: tourists and road construction. Despite some different circumstances these days, that’s still the case this summer.

During a Zoom call on Wednesday organized by the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce as part of its new webinar series, Montana Department of Transportation Missoula District Administrator Bob Vosen laid out the future plans for road projects throughout the Flathead Valley.

He said multiple ongoing overlay projects on U.S. 93, U.S. 2 and Willow Glen Drive were completed this spring, and the only outstanding piece for those improvements is final striping on U.S. 2 and U.S. 93.

Next up on the docket is the Kalispell Concrete Rehab project set to start the evening of Sunday, July 19. This pavement preservation project will spruce up 1.6 miles of concrete on Main Street, between Second and Washington streets, and on Idaho Street between Meridian Road and Seventh Avenue.

Night crews will remove badly broken-up concrete panels and do rebar “stitching” on the concrete pieces that are in better shape. These improvements will smooth the road, reduce traffic noise and, most importantly, preserve the road before it requires a major overhaul.

“We wanted to refresh it a little bit rather than have to start over with new construction,” Vosen explained.

The majority of the work will take place Sunday night through Thursday morning between the hours of 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., until late October. Drivers can expect single-lane closures, directional signage, signals and lower speed limits during this time.

Another major project will be the Kalispell Bypass Foy’s Lake Road Interchange Project. This much-anticipated development will remove the roundabout at the intersection of the U.S. 93 Bypass and Foy’s Lake Road.

The roundabout was originally installed based on traffic projections from the late 1990s and early 2000s. While the interchange was always intended to be an interim solution, the roundabout has reportedly exceeded its traffic capacity earlier than first expected.

The exact reconfiguration of the new intersection has yet to be determined. “We’re just starting to dabble into what their design features are,” Vosen reported.

The current proposal would add a grade-separated interchange, with the bypass traveling on a bridge constructed above Foy’s Lake Road, which would be kept at-grade.

LHC Inc. is working on the construction of the new intersection, and KLJ Engineering is handling the design. The LHC/KLJ bid for the project came in at $14.7 million, and the city of Kalispell has been awarded $12.7 million in federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grant funds for the project.

The project will follow the state’s design-build process, which will fast-track the development compared to the standard design-bid-build process.

The exact timeline of the construction is still undetermined, however. Crews started collecting soil samples near the intersection on July 13 as the final stage in the design process. Road construction could begin this fall, although the bulk will likely take place late this upcoming winter and early next spring, according to Vosen.

After that, the Department of Transportation will move farther south on the bypass and redesign the roundabouts at Airport Road and Basecamp Drive. The roadway will also be widened to four lanes in the southern-most 1.5 miles of the bypass.

Funding for this project has not yet been secured, but it looks like construction could start next spring.

Next summer, the state is looking at potentially redesigning the intersection at Treeline Road in North Kalispell, where shoppers turn left off U.S. 93 to access Starbucks and the Verizon Store. Vosen said he has received numerous comments about the safety of turning left at this intersection, although MDT’s most recent data from about six months ago indicated there have not been any crashes requiring a law enforcement response at that location.

Later next year, MDT will also undertake “a lengthy series of projects” at three locations along U.S. 2 East between Hungry Horse and Nyack. Crews will use a combination of a cold in-place recycling, a new asphalt rehabilitation process, and traditional methods to overlay this roadway. However, the traffic and weather on U.S. 2 East present significant challenges and limit the window in which the state can work on the road.

MDT will endeavor to “keep that much-traveled road put together in a very short construction window,” Vosen said.

Also on schedule for next year is the Dern/Springcreek roundabout, which has received considerable attention throughout the process of determining the best improvements for the intersection. Vosen said there is high crash data at that intersection, and a roundabout will make the raised interchange flatter and slow the high-speed traffic there.

Later on, the state hopes to widen the shoulders along Montana 206 to “improve safety on that route.” Crews will undertake one large project to broaden the narrow shoulders and flatten some of the road’s slopes, since Vosen said have been a number of crash clusters along that highway.

Eventually, MDT also has plans to make changes on Reserve Drive to address traffic congestion there. In the spring, Reserve Drive was re-designated from an Urban Route to a Primary Route in the state highway system, which puts the roadway into a new pot of funding. The change will likely speed up the timeline for construction, but since there are many other major thoroughfares in that system as well, it will likely be a few years before those changes are made, Vosen said.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.