by Nathan Boddy
Fifteen years ago the City of Hamilton engaged in a joint Transportation Plan alongside Ravalli County, which was aimed at determining how transportation systems could appropriately manage anticipated growth. According to Donny Ramer, Hamilton Public Works Director, the recommendations which grew out of that plan tended to be large, expensive projects, and also carried a suggested time frame of 5 to 10 years for completion.
“They obviously didn’t look at our city budget,” said Ramer about the plan’s highlighted transportation improvements. “But we’ve been chipping off a lot of these.” He went on to mention the phased improvements the city has done to Fairgrounds Road which has moved eastward and is now at Kurtz Lane.
The newly built Ravalli Street will include improved parking adjacent to the Catholic Church. Public Works Director Donny Ramer says that they worked in tandem with the church as the group went through its own Conditional Use process in order to arrive at a safer design. Photo by Nathan Boddy.
Following the 2010 Transportation Plan came the more specific Non-Motorized Transportation Plan in 2012 which categorized existing and needed sidewalks, bike lanes and pathways within the City of Hamilton. One of the biggest gaps identified by that plan pertained to safe east-west connectivity.
“South of State Street, there’s no contiguous east-west sidewalk,” said Ramer, adding that, for neighborhoods on the west side of Highway 93, Ravalli Street is the primary way that kids get to Daly Elementary School.
“We did the improvements on the east side of Ravalli Street a couple years back,” Ramer said, indicating the sidewalk adjacent to the Coffee Cup and along the south side of the road which made the area safer for pedestrians. The next step in completing the linkage, however, will now focus on the west side of Ravalli Street from the highway to the far western end where the road turns the corner at 9th Street. Beginning in 2023, the city contracted with WGM Engineering to design a newly constructed road with resident input at various open houses. At their regular meeting on Tuesday, January 21, the City Council approved a contract with Williams Civil Construction for $2.6 million to accomplish the work.
Hamilton Public Works Director Donny Ramer discusses reconstruction of Ravalli Street, which will get underway in March. Photo by Nathan Boddy.
The rebuilt Ravalli Street will include traffic calming features such as a slightly sinuous pattern in some stretches, as well as a traffic calming circle with mountable edges and a planter at the 7th Street intersection. Through its entire length, the street will have either shared or dedicated bike lanes.
While safety of traffic movement was at the forefront of the design, the back and forth pattern which residents will see on the western half of the rebuilt road resulted from multiple encroachments to the public right-of-way, and the city’s desire to keep landowner impacts to a minimum.
“We fit it in to try and give people as much space as we could for the ones that were encroaching on the right-of-way,” said Ramer, pointing out several structures that are either near or on the line.
Ramer says that the contractor hopes to get started on the rebuild in March, and that residents should know that, “there are definitely going to be changes to how people get where they need to go.” And while not all plans have been finalized, the current thinking is that all the asphalt will be removed from Ravalli prior to focused work in designated sections. The exposed roadway will be graded and smooth, and accessible in areas where work is not ongoing. The contractors will then complete each section, likely in 2 or 3 block stretches, through final concrete work. Ultimately, they will then pave the entire project as a last step, hopefully before school starts again for the fall session. Ramer says that a similar approach was used on 3rd Street last summer, and was successful. Ramer also said that the city will be keeping residents up to date on the construction through its Facebook page, as well as a dedicated page on the rebuild which will be on the city’s website.
“The goal is to keep the north-south streets open until they are working on those intersections,” said Ramer, adding that limited east-west travel on Ravalli Street itself will be the largest encumbrance to residents. That difficulty may be especially challenging as residents decide how best to turn north on Highway 93. Their choices for safely doing so without having to duck into fast moving traffic will come down to the lights on Grove or Main Streets.
“I think just be aware of where you need to go,” says Ramer, “and we’ll try and do the best we can with the detours to get people there safely.”
