Highway 2 Construction will start soon

The Montana Department of Transportation outlined its plans for significant roadwork on U.S. Highway 2 from Hungry Horse to Stanton Creek that will start in early May and run through November.

Bob Vosen, administrator for the state’s District 1, and public information officer Amy Aiello of Big Sky Public Relations met with Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce members last week to begin informing area businesses of the scope of the project.

The work will include roadway resurfacing, pavement marking repainting, guardrail upgrades, Americans for Disability Act ramp sidewalk upgrades, and rumble strip additions.

The roadway resurfacing aspect of the project will take three different forms, with some segments of the 10 mile Hungry Horse to West Glacier stretch undergoing a chip seal while other areas — those that are badly cracked and rutted — will be fully repaved.

The 16 mile narrow canyon section between West Glacier and Stanton Creek will be repaved entirely using a cold, in-place recycling method not typically used in Montana, Vosen said.

This method, infrequently used due to the state’s cheap abundance of rock and other materials, lends itself well to that narrow stretch of roadway, said Vosen, in large part because it reduces traffic contributed by contractors.

Cold in-place recycling involves equipment that grinds up the road surface, grinds up the road surface, processes it and lays it back down to cure. The trucks used to haul away and dispose of the ground-up asphalt accumulated through traditional paving are no longer required, helping to decrease congestion of the roadway. Pilot cars will be used to guide traffic in the 16 mile West Glacier to Stanton section, with 24-hour piloting occurring in the areas where guardrails have been removed for replacement. The Hungry Horse to West Glacier section, with its large number of lanes and wide shoulders, should have plenty of room to keep traffic flowing, and minimal delays of up to 15 minutes can be expected, he said.

However, delays are expected to greatly increase in the West Glacier to Stanton Creek section where two already tight lanes of traffic will be bottlenecked into one, causing up to 30-45 minute delays. “We recognize how impactful this is,” Vosen said. “I know that businesses rely on summer tourism, but with the way [the road] has degraded over the last couple years,

we’re at the cusp where, if we don’t get in there and do something now, I’m fearful of how drastic the reconstruction would look [in the future].”

Vosen explained that resurfacing the road now would prevent a more intensive and costly road reconstruction that could result in “five plus years of non-stop construction” later.

At the end of the month, the department will host two public open house events. The first will be an in-person forum at Canyon Elementary at 6:30 p.m.on Thursday, April 29.

The second will be a virtual Zoom meeting held the following day, Friday, April 30, at noon.

Once active construction begins, weekly project updates will be distributed to the public through email, text and radio. To sign up for weekly email or text updates, email Aiello at amy@bigskypublicrelations. com.

Interested parties will be able to get more frequent updates by calling the project hotline at 406- 207-4484. For more information visit https://mdt.mt.gov/ pubinvolve/us2hungryhorse/.