Page 5 - Flathead Beacon // 7.30.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM
NEWS
JULY 30, 2014 | 5
W•O•R•D•S of the Week
AN INDEX OF RECENT NEWSMAKERS
BEAR
A hiker deployed bear spray and then shot a bear using a handgun July 26 on Glacier National Park’s Mount Brown Lookout Trail. The 57-year old hiker from Texas was hiking alone when a bear charged him from an area below the trail. The hiker emptied his canister and then fired one round of his handgun. Officials believe the bear was wounded and ran away.
TOURISM
The University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research published a study estimating that 565,372 cyclists rode through Montana in 2012. On average, those cyclists spent 8.8 nights in the state and spent more than $75 per day.
WALSH
U.S. Sen. John Walsh was broadsided July 16 by a scathing New York Times report that revealed the former National Guardsman plagiarized a substantial portion of a 2007 research paper to obtain his master’s degree at U.S. Army War College.
PLANE CRASH
The pilot of a small, single- engine, homebuilt airplane was confirmed dead July 28 when the wreckage of his aircraft was discovered in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho. The pilot was flying from Richland, Wash., to Baker.
A preliminary conceptual drawing, created by CTA Architects Engineers, shows Flathead County’s vision for creating four lanes of traffic on the east side of the courthouse with a pedestrian pathway and small inlet for vehicular access on the west side. COURTESY IMAGE
Downtown Kalispell’s Prominent yet Troublesome Road Couplet
As planning efforts
pick up on U.S. 93,
county administrators
want to reroute the
highway around one
side of the courthouse
but city officials are
raising concerns
By DILLON TABISH of the Beacon
The Flathead County Courthouse,
placed in its distinct stature at the south- ern doorstep of downtown Kalispell, sits on an island surrounded by the main thor- oughfare of U.S. Highway 93 flowing into the heart of the city.
It’s a unique layout that showcases the prominent historical structure front and center on Main Street. It’s also a trouble- some – and some say extremely hazard- ous – bottleneck that squeezes traffic into winding single lanes on each side.
“The safety is such a huge issue. There
are hundreds of people crossing every day. I’m one of them,” Mike Pence, the county administrator, said of the pedestrian road crossings around the courthouse.
Administrators with the Montana De- partment of Transportation agree. The agency has wanted to address the court- house couplet since the early 1990s, before traffic flow significantly increased through Kalispell and before the U.S. 93 Alternate Route began materializing as an attempt to reduce traffic congestion through down- town.
See Couplet PAGE 22
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