After Decades of Delays, ‘Whitefish West’ Highway Project Clears Final Speed Bump

Longtime residents along the hazardous highway corridor west of Whitefish remember learning about the plan to rebuild the roadway decades ago. From the outset, a groundswell of community support gathered around the project’s proposed safety upgrades, as well as its inclusion of a bicycle and pedestrian path connecting the city center to points of recreation several high-risk highway miles away.

The Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) first evaluated the project in 1988 as part of a sprawling rehabilitation of U.S. Highway 93 stretching from Somers to Livermore Flats, roughly 5 miles west of Whitefish. Since then, the project’s inchmeal development has unfolded by degrees along a national highway corridor that functions both as a critical north-south transportation route as well as one of Whitefish’s main arterials, providing access to commercial, residential and recreational hubs throughout the community.

 The project’s first two phases to refurbish and modernize the urban highway corridor bisecting the heart of Whitefish were completed more than a decade ago. The first phase centered on the rehabilitation of Second Street between Baker and Spokane avenues, including the pedestrian-choked Central Avenue crosswalks, which MDT catalogs as the busiest pedestrian crossing in the state, while the second phase focused on the segment of highway connecting Baker Avenue to the Whitefish Lake Golf Club at Mountainside Drive, including the Veterans Memorial Bridge across the Whitefish River.

But the project’s final segment to reconstruct and widen the twisting ribbon of highway that contours over steep terrain on the western edge of Whitefish has been beset with delays as funding priorities shifted, design schematics were revised and right-of-way negotiations with private property owners faltered. Meanwhile, city engineers who helped shape the highway project running through the heart of Whitefish have since retired without knowing its fate, while the young families who cheered the project’s safety upgrades have sent their kids to college.

As work begins this week on the sprawling highway construction project slated for completion in the fall of 2026, those same residents are glad to see the plans coming to fruition, and the city administrators whose careers the project outlived say the project will benefit pedestrians and motorists traversing the gateway corridor west of town.

“I’m just glad it’s finally getting done,” said Karin Hilding, who spent nearly 30 years as a city engineer for the city of Whitefish before retiring in March. Having helped secure a $3.5 million TIGER grant in 2010 for the segment of Whitefish West following Spokane and Second Avenue through the city’s commercial core, Hilding said the city wielded an unusual amount of influence over the state highway project.

“The project was broken into phases because there was never going to be enough money to do the whole thing at once, so we started with the section closest to town,” Hilding said. “We were awarded the TIGER grant, which was crazy because there were only 50 awarded across the country and most of them were for massive railway projects, and then you had this one project in little old Whitefish. But because we were awarded grant money, we were able to take the lead and prioritize bicycles and pedestrians and foot traffic.”

The plan was to complete the phases in rapid succession, Hilding said, and jump “right into phase three” in 2015. But the final phase stumbled when the state highway department encountered unforeseen expenses associated with right-of-way acquisitions, as well as the complications of rebuilding a roadway over steep, mountainous terrain.

“This project has sat completed on the shelf for 10 years,” Hilding said. “It’s going to be a lot more expensive because it’s been held up for so long, but I’m glad they’re finally doing it.”

Cameron Blake, whose family has lived on Sasquatch Hollow Road on the western edge of Whitefish for 25 years, said she welcomed the project’s safety enhancements — a new driving surface, designated turn lanes, improved lines of sight, wider shoulders, new signage and guardrails — even if they are long overdue.

“It would have been nice 15 years ago when the kids were still living at home,” Blake, whose three children graduated from Whitefish High School, said this week. For years, the blind intersection has placed residents of Sasquatch Hollow and Blanchard Lake roads in peril as they merge onto the highway and guess whether southbound traffic is about to crest the hill. Blake taught her kids to listen for the hum of approaching traffic before gunning it onto the highway while building speed.

“We’d do it by ear,” Blake said. “I always told my kids, ‘you have to listen, and then decisively pull out [onto Highway 93].’”

That won’t be an issue in the future, after work crews reduce the height and grade of the hill and realign the roadbed to improve the line of sight.

But the feature of the project with perhaps the broadest appeal is the separated shared-use bike and pedestrian path along Highway 93 from Mountainside Drive to Twin Bridges Road, affording access from town to three trailheads and two fishing access sites.

For Blake, the addition of the path is worth the long wait, even if the next two construction seasons add brief but frequent wait times to her commute into town.

“I’m not looking forward to the delays, but the overall safety improvements will be huge, and then having access to the trails — I can finally ride the bike clear out to Twin Bridges Road and get on the trails there,” Blake said, describing the path’s integration with the Whitefish Trail system at Spencer Lake.

The intersection at Twin Bridges Road will also gain a westbound turn lane, easing the apprehensions of motorists approaching the pinched intersection from either direction while reducing blind spots.

Earlier this month, MDT officials shared details of the project at an open house at Whitefish City Hall. Attendees were mostly curious about the tree-clearing work that occurred this spring to accommodate the relocation of utilities and the roadway, as well as construction delays, environmental impacts, and the design of the shared-use path.

John Schmidt, MDT’s construction engineer on what’s now dubbed the U.S. 93 West of Whitefish Reconstruction project, said the path will begin near the intersection of Mountainside Drive, contouring along the north edge of the highway before migrating beneath the roadbed about 1,500 feet east of Skyles Lake Lane, near the old Stillwater Fish House restaurant. After the undercrossing, the path will track along the south edge of the highway until its terminus at Livermore Flats, west of Twin Bridges Road and the North Spencer Mountain Trailhead.

Based on input from the Whitefish Citizens Working Group and other public feedback, including from local recreation groups, MDT had planned to extend the path all the way to Skyles Lake Lane on the north side of Highway 93 before constructing an underpass, allowing the path to link up to the trails at Spencer on the highway’s south side. The separated bike path required additional right-of-way at some locations, however, and when MDT reached an impasse in negotiations with one landowner, project officials were forced to revise the design of the path and stop just short of connecting it to Skyles Lake.

For bicyclists and pedestrians who want to access the Whitefish Trail at Skyles, or use the fishing access, they’ll have to cross the highway or traverse the north shoulder.

Jedd Sankar-Gorton, program director at Whitefish Legacy Partners (WLP), the nonprofit organization that oversees development and maintenance of the Whitefish Trail system, said even though WLP advocated for the path’s extension to Skyles and is disappointed it fell just short of full connectivity, the shared-use path is “a big win for safety, access, non-car transportation and recreation on the Whitefish Trail.”

Craig Workman, the public works director for the city of Whitefish since 2015, gave MDT plaudits for its commitment to the path, as well as other aspects of the project that encountered headwinds during right-of-way negotiations, furthering delays.

“To MDT’s credit, they did get hung out on a couple private landowner right-of-way acquisitions,” Workman said. “Those can take a long time to sort out.”

Workman said the sophistication of the project’s design also evolved over time, growing more nuanced as project engineers adapted to the complex landscape girding the outskirts of Whitefish. In addition, the city of Whitefish and participants in the Whitefish Citizens Working Group “identified a strong desire to preserve the character of downtown Whitefish and minimize right-of-way impacts to residences and businesses along the highway,” according to a 2008 environmental impact statement, resulting in “changes to lane configurations, lane widths, and the use of a curb and gutter section at various locations” that were not included in the original plan.

“When they first designed this, it was a pretty standard roadway design. They were going to reconstruct the road in its current location and add the bike path,” Workman said. “But when they got into the details of the design, they realized that the mountainous terrain demanded a more complex, multi-corridor plan. At the end of the day, the design is going to be safer and more conducive to the landscape, so it was probably worth the wait.”

According to an engineer’s estimate in April, the project’s bidding price was $22,549,265.29. The bid was awarded to Knife River Corporation, which came in under the estimate at $18,270,000, which is a much higher price tag than what was projected 30 years ago.

John Wilson, who served as Whitefish’s public works director for 18 years before retiring in 2015, said the cost increase was part economic and part topographic.

“The original estimate was prepared in 1995, so aside from labor and material costs increases, the logistics and the topography of the project presented an incredible challenge,” Wilson said. “That’s the nature of every project, but when you consider the expense of the right-of-way acquisitions, all the curves and hills and safety requirements associated with Whitefish West, it adds up fast.”

In fact, the project’s protracted timeline bestowed local municipalities with cost-savings benefits, including assigning the responsibility of construction and maintenance costs to MDT, as opposed to Flathead County or the city or Whitefish.

According to MDT’s Maintenance Management System, the cost to maintain one mile of shared-use path is approximately $2,005.70 annually, which factors in the cost of snow removal, mowing and general maintenance. With more than 203 miles of shared-use paths in Montana, the annual costs to maintain the paths are approximately $1,570,000. Historically, MDT was responsible for constructing and maintaining shared-use paths in its right-of-way, but policy changes — including the 2017 Montana Legislature’s passage of the Montana Shared-Use Path Act — revised criteria directing MDT to construct and maintain shared-use paths, and redistributed the cost-sharing burden to cities and counties for paths located within their jurisdiction.

“Because the shared-use path was part of the original scope, it had to be constructed, and it predates MDT’s new policy on shared-use path maintenance,” Workman said. “Again, credit to MDT for sticking with this, because it has been a huge priority for the city to get the bike path since I started.”

Since construction began on May 19, travelers can expect traffic control, lane reconfigurations and reduced speeds through the project area, as well as delays of up to 15 minutes. There will be one-way traffic between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays, with traffic control in place — including pilot cars and stop signs.  Speeds will be reduced to 35 miles per hour in the area and drivers may find delays of up to 15 minutes. MDT said it will accommodate two-lane traffic as much as possible; however, one-lane traffic controlled by pilot vehicles or flaggers may be necessary, according to Schmidt, the MDT construction engineer.

“Flaggers, pilot cars, traffic lights — we’ll use all the tools in the toolbox to help people get through this safely and with minimal delays,” Schmidt said, adding that construction would be on hold from May 23 to May 26 to accommodate travelers during the upcoming holiday weekend.

In March, MDT cleared a swath of trees on either side of the highway, which is necessary for utility relocation and reconstruction. MDT had to work within a specific timeframe to compete the tree-clearing work due to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which says the nests of protected migratory bird species can’t be disturbed once they are active. MDT scheduled the tree-clearing work well ahead of the highway reconstruction to avoid the nesting birds. Species of concern like common loons, the Le Conte’s sparrow, the bald eagle, and the peregrine falcon all occupy habitat surrounding the project area.

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