Sun Road project burns through funds

By CHRIS PETERSON / Hungry Horse News

Glacier National Park expects to have spent the entire $50 million appropriation for the Going-to-the-Sun Road reconstruction by the end of next summer.

The appropriation was an earmarked fund for the road and was separate of an additional $32 million of Park Service funding that has also gone toward the highway over the past several years. The earmarked funds were garnered by Montana Sen. Max Baucus in 2005 in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, Transportation Equity Act of 2005.

The $50 million was expected to last five years, but now it is only expected to last four years, Park spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt said last week. She said costs for the road have risen considerably. The initial cost estimate to rebuild the aging and historic highway was $140 million to $170 million; now estimates are at least double that.

Next summer crews from HK Construction of Idaho are expected to start reconstruction and rehabilitation on the highway from Big Bend to Logan Pass - a stretch of about three more miles. That project will expend the remainder of the $50 million.

To date, the Park, in concert with the Federal Highway Administration, has reconstructed a section of the road from the west side tunnel to Haystack Creek - all told about 3.6 miles. Other smaller sections have also been worked on, including the Triple Arches, and short sections on both sides of Logan Pass. Triple Arches and the smaller sections were completed before the $50 million appropriation.

The Park also built a transit center, purchased buses and revamped the West Entrance.

EAST OF the Divide, crews have rebuilt the road below the East Side Tunnel, but those funds were from a separate pot of emergency money because the highway was damaged by severe flooding.

West side damage from flooding was also fixed under emergency funding.

The road to date has proven inherently expensive to fix. Masons, for example, dismantle its historic rock walls, mark the stones and then put them back together after the roadbed has been reinforced.

Crews have also done extensive drilling and bolting of cliff faces above the highway to stabilize Glacier's notoriously unstable rock.

Vanderbilt said Federal Highways Administration officials and Park Service officials are planning on meetings to come up with ways to cut costs on the project in future years. But just how that will be accomplished won't be finalized until next year.

In the meantime, the project will continue through next summer and there could be additional funding from Park Service coffers in 2010.

By 2010, Congress will once again take up a federal highways spending plan. How much the Sun Road project will receive, however, remains to be seen.

The road still has several key areas of need - walls are missing in the alpine section on the east and west sides and in recent years, nature hasn't been kind the road, as it's been pounded by avalanches, floods and rockslides.

There's still work that needs to be done from the West Side Tunnel to the West Entrance, from Haystack Creek to Big Bend, from Logan Pass to the East Side Tunnel and from the East Side Tunnel to St. Mary.

Lower elevations of the road have lowest priority, Park officials have noted in the past, as the alpine sections have seen the most damage over the years.

While the road has proven expensive, it's also an economic engine for the valley. In the summer when its entire length is open, it's estimated to bring $1 million a day to the local economy.