By Margaret Gorski, Stevensville
Last Tuesday I attended the open house on the proposed improvements to the Eastside Highway (Secondary 203) from Florence to Stevensville. If you have not heard of this project, now is the time to study it and give the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) your comments.
The MDT’s opening proposal is to basically put in three lanes the entire route with a center turn lane and to straighten out the curves at Ambrose and Rathburn Lane.
I have been driving this route for over 25 years and have observed many near misses, have hit several deer, have luckily avoided several “head-ons” caused by impatient drivers passing on blind stretches, have had to take evasive action to avoid hitting cars that slide through the stop signs in the winter, rear ending the school busses and dodging dogs and people trying to walk on the non-existent shoulder. And in the winter I forever worry about sliding off the road and rolling down the really steep embankments. So, it’s no doubt that there needs to be some safety improvements.
But… please, Ravalli County residents, do we really need another north-south highway that looks like Highway 93? This is a secondary highway whose primary use is residential and for rural agriculture. Commercial industrial truck traffic improvements should be focused on Highway 93 and leave the Eastside Highway as a slower, less developed, more scenic route through the valley that services primarily local traffic, pedestrians and bicyclers who wish to access the river and to maintain some of the scenic quality of the roadside that is left in this valley. Do we really need a center turning lane the entire way just because there has been no forethought about how many driveways should be allowed to access the highway? Center turning lanes are nicknamed “suicide lanes” because they end up being used as high speed merge lanes because people are too impatient to wait their turn.
For those of you who were loud and in vocal opposition to the possible “round abouts” at Ambrose and Rathbun (or elsewhere in the valley), please read up on roundabouts. No matter how you may personally feel about them, the reason they are starting to show up is because they have been studied and shown to be safer, cleaner, take less space, less energy, and make people slow down at critical intersections. The studies do show that, although there are collisions in roundabouts, because people have to slow down, injuries are less severe than at traditional stop lighted intersections. Yes, they are harder on truckers, but let’s focus truck traffic on Highway 93. Roundabouts are designed to handle trucks, but trucking is not the major use of the Eastside Highway. Truckers supporting agriculture and who must use the Eastside Highway need to use special care. If roundabouts are not constructed in these locations, if you think they are dangerous now, wait until they are
straightened out, banked and people start screaming around them going 80 mph without slowing down and on ice!
If roundabouts don’t go in at Ambrose and other major intersections like Ambrose, it will only be a matter of time when those intersections end up with traffic lights on them and the entire Eastside Highway will end up looking like Highway 93, or even worse, like Reserve Street in Missoula, or Highway 93 going through Hamilton. Is that what you want? That’s not what I want.
How this stretch of highway is improved will establish the footprint of how the entire route from Florence to Hamilton will look. So let’s be thoughtful about how we want the eastside of the valley to look and be developed in the future. Every inch of the Bitterroot Valley doesn’t have to look like Highway 93 as it goes from Lolo to Hamilton. We can do better!