The solution for Badrock Canyon is 'slow down'

In the recent issue of the Hungry Horse News, the front-page headline read "Safety drives interest in highway project," followed by the subtitle "New planning process could speed things up," regarding the U.S. 2 highway project at Badrock Canyon.

I read with interest the suggestions related at the meeting for improvements to this stretch of highway, from the reader boards (as if drivers need more distractions) and wildlife overpasses to the absurd suggestion of building a double-decker highway as a modern engineering marvel, and the final comment "between the cottonwoods along the river and the rock outcroppings above the road, something has to go."

I would like to suggest the novel idea of in the interest of safety - slow things down.

Put in the bike and pedestrian path, build a new bridge, resurface the highway and fix that nasty shift in the grade of the highway at the river access. Leave the cottonwoods and leave the cliffs. Leave the pullouts at Berne Memorial Park and Shepherd Memorial Fountain (or, as we always call it, the spring), and by all means, leave those old signs, restore them, preserve them and their unique verbiage, they are wonderful beacons of the past.

As a kid, I remember on our trips to Glacier Park we always stopped at the spring for 20 minutes or so, in the cool of the canyon, drank the clear cold mountain spring water and ate Vienna Sausages with crackers and mustard. Good times.

Place signs at each end of the canyon, "Max speed limit 35 mph." Patrol the area. Enforce the speed limit, issue tickets and amass the fines. They'll learn to slow down. All tractor-trailers, motor homes and travel trailers have to slow down in the canyon anyway. What's the hurry? Enjoy the view. It's not a race to get to Glacier Park, and if you're going the other way, leave five minutes earlier.

If safety is the main concern, slow down, it's only 2.2 miles. You're soon through it. Then "let the race be on again."

Keith Kratzer lives in Columbia Falls.