Highway money

Montanans should thank their lucky stars — and their congressmen — for the $2 billion the state stands to get in the new six-year federal highway bill.

Here in the Northwest, $50 million is lined up for the Going-to-the-Sun Road rebuild. That's less than half the money that's needed, but additional money for the alpine highway is hidden away in National Park Service highway funding.

Another $30 million is available for the Kalispell bypass. If the project stays small and reasonable, the money will go a long ways toward completing a long-needed project. But if planners concede to every public request for another access point, the cost will increase astronomically, and the road will not function as a bypass at all.

The U.S. Highway 2 bridge over the Two Medicine River, near East Glacier, will be the most expensive structure in the state. The new highway bill allocated $25 million for the bridge — enough for preparatory work.

Whitefish got $3 million for pedestrian and bike paths. That's remarkable considering how much money the city has put into trails over the past few years and how much other Montana cities and towns receive.

A public clamoring for a Whitefish bypass can still be heard, but that's not what the city needs. Very few vehicles heading north up the valley continue on through Whitefish to Eureka or Canada — they end up here in Whitefish.

What the city needs is more cross-town arterials and one more major railroad crossing. Growth north of the railroad track is trapped behind the Baker Ave. overpass bottleneck, and residents both east and west of town must travel through downtown to leave Whitefish.

Problem is, the next big batch of federal highway money will go into the U.S. Highway 93 rebuild, not city arterials. And building a bypass with federal money will not reduce traffic in the city.