Bike path is coming to Railroad Street; 12th Avenue almost complete
Railroad Street in this file photo.
Columbia Falls will eventually have a new bike/pedestrian path from the Third Street intersection of Fourth Avenue West and up Railroad Street.
The $1.2 million project is funded by a federal Transportation Alternative grant, administered by the Montana Department of Transportation.
The city has a 13.42% match in the project.
The cost of the actual construction is estimated at $800,000. The other costs were for design and engineering of the path.
Construction is expected in 2024 or 2025, representatives said during an open house recently.
The city hopes to secure another grant to seamlessly tie in the Railroad Street project with reconstruction of Thirteenth Street West from the high school up Fourth Avenue West to the new Glacier Gateway Elementary School.
That larger project, about $10 million, will be funded by a federal Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant.
In other street news, the Sandry Construction completed a roughly $1.2 million project to reconstruct 12th Avenue West north to the Truck Route.
The project included extending city sewer and water to the Cedar Palace Medical Center.
That project was a blend of federal, private and city funding. A federal Economic Development Administration grant paid for half of the project. The grant was secured because Plum Creek closed its sawmills and plywood plant here and the Cedar Palace Medical Center would make up for some of the lost jobs.
The Medical Center paid about $333,0000 toward the project and the city paid the rest.
The only sticking point is the small section near the railroad tracks, as the city is still awaiting a decision by Burlington Northern Railway to finish a reasonable paving project in the railroad right-of-way.
At one point, the railroad wanted the city to pay for crossing arms at the crossing, where the trains go all of 20 mph.
The city balked at the cost of that, so it left the small section of road in the railroad right-of-way untouched until something can be worked out with BNSF.