Planning needed for 'new towns' on U.S. Hwy 93

It should be obvious to everyone now that the commercial expansion on the north side of Kalispell has far outpaced our highway's ability to handle the normal flow of automobile and truck traffic and is causing a bottleneck as lengthy as all the stores that stretch alongside the roadway, plus an additional and painful backup during high-volume times of day.

Add to this a temporary lane closure due to repair or a fender-bender and it is gridlock, pure and simple.

The ongoing examples of widening intersections, adding turnouts and fixing curbing after the stores, which they intend to serve, have opened, have proven to be truly numbing experiences in more ways than one.

The prospect of more, and more massive, development in the works can only be viewed as too much too soon. Adequate planning for continuously growing traffic levels is crucial to make any further expansion acceptable. Let there be no mistake — the actual trend and the announced plans are for continuously growing development and continuously growing traffic levels.

Stop and think about it. A huge development the size of the Glacier Mall/Town Center requires some new thinking, new at least to our concept of planned development as evidenced in the recent sprawl we are just beginning to enjoy. We should treat it as a new town and allow for a highway interchange to access it, in the interest of both safety and convenience.

History provides ample evidence of the frequency and severity of traffic accidents at high-volume intersections and turnouts that spring up along our speedways. Consider U.S. Highway 93 and West Reserve Drive, the old Costco location on U.S. Highway 2, and the Majestic Valley Arena on U.S. 93 during heavily attended events. The logical course would be to strive to reduce such dangerous situations by pursuing alternative solutions.

The best solution by far is a highway interchange, which would allow for safer frontage road access to the many elements of the new town and would avoid creating the numerous high-risk intersections that a less well-planned design would inevitably force upon the highway. The convenience of frontage road access to business and residential areas at lower speeds is obvious and a bonus to keeping the highway open to highway travel as it is intended.

Financing of such a promising and forward-looking solution to the problems of traffic congestion and safety, problems which are after all a direct result of continuing development, can and should be addressed with realistic approaches proven successful elsewhere. These should include developer impact fees as well as bonding through creation of service improvement districts for this and similar developments.

An interchange is within our reach and should be the highest priority. Most importantly, in order to proceed with planned development, we need planned transportation solutions which require us to identify and consider different options, and we must do it before the development is allowed to take place. We should look ahead far enough to ensure that our solutions will continue to serve their intended purposes. The alternative is an inevitable "SlowWay 93."

William Crawford is a resident of Kalispell.