Glacier Park

forging ahead with big Sun Highway

contracts

By CHRIS PETERSON

Hungry Horse News

Glacier National Park and federal Highway Administration officials are forging ahead with contract plans to rehabilitate the Going-to-the-Sun Highway.

A meeting is planned May 23 in Vancouver, Wash. to go over what's known as the "Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity" contract which is government-speak for the contract to rehab the ailing highway.

The contract will have a base period of two years with four, two-year option periods for a potential total ordering period of 10 years, according to the highway administration's Web site.

The maximum order of the contract is expected to be $140 million, according to federal highways documents, but whether that amount of funding will materialize remains to be seen.

Michael Johnson, a contract specialist with federal highways, noted contracts aren't let unless funding is available. For example, if funding falls short, specific projects within the larger umbrella of work wouldn't be awarded.

"Government contracts are always subject to funding," Johnson noted.

Meanwhile, the Park and federal highways are expecting to let out another contract estimated between $2 million and $5 million for rehab of the highway between Oberlin Bend and east of Logan Pass sometime this fall.

Known as Phase V, the project includes making drainage improvements at Oberlin Bend, where a big box culvert will be replaced. It also calls for shoring up the portals at the West Side Tunnel, said park landscape architect Jack Gordon.

But the bulk of the Phase V work will come in stabilizing the highway and creating new rock walls just east of Logan Pass. Currently the road in that section has seen sloughing and severe erosion. It also has no guardrails of any sort - a vehicle could easily drive off the edge.

The park will try to balance the work and make it "as natural appearing as we can," Gordon said.

Meanwhile, work on the West Side Tunnel, Haystack Creek and Triple Arches will continue this summer. The main project is at the West Side Tunnel, where crews from Morgen and Oswood of Great Falls are driving in huge I-beams down through the road surface into bedrock to anchor the highway to the side of the mountain.