After learning recently that Willow Glen Drive no longer meets the criteria to remain on the state’s priority funding list for secondary road improvements, the Flathead County commissioners now are looking for a replacement project to retain the county’s spot on the state list.

Willow Glen Drive is being redesignated as an urban route, based on data from the 2010 U.S. Census that showed expanding population and urban limits in Kalispell, according to Montana Department of Transportation Missoula District Administrator Ed Toavs. 

And because the reconstruction of more than two miles of Willow Glen was the next project up on the list that prioritizes federal aid for secondary roads, time is of the essence to name a replacement road.

From the state’s point of view, three secondary roads that easily qualify are Whitefish Stage Road, North Fork Road and Montana 206.

“We’ve received a lot of comments about all three roads. They’re all five-star projects,” Toavs told the commissioners on Monday. “Whitefish Stage and Highway 206 carry a tremendous amount of traffic. The North Fork is seasonal, but if the surface was upgraded the [traffic] numbers would increase.”

The replacement project should be somewhere in the $5 million range and must be one project, state Secondary Roads Engineer Wayne Noem advised during a teleconference with the commissioners. It can’t be five $1 million projects.

Flathead County’s next secondary-road project is still about five years away in 2018, Toavs estimated. Montana will get $27.3 million in federal money this year for secondary-road projects.

The Willow Glen project was estimated at $3.5 million. That project now falls under the urban highway funding program. The Technical Advisory Committee that includes county and Kalispell city officials ultimately will decide what priority should be placed on the Willow Glen project.

Kalispell Planning Director Tom Jentz said the Kalispell urban area gets about $600,000 a year for improvements to its primary road system.

“It’s precious little to solve any road problems,” he said.

Willow Glen Drive is on Kalispell’s “short list” of primary urban projects, along with Whitefish Stage from West Reserve to the Whitefish River and West Reserve Drive between U.S. 93 and U.S. 2. The last urban project completed was the $12 million rebuild of North Meridian Road in 2007.

“We’re probably 10 years away from having the money to complete a project,” Jentz said about Kalispell’s urban roads.

There are several other secondary roads in Flathead County that could be considered for the state priority list, including Farm to Market, Foy’s Lake and Thompson River roads, and a portion on Montana 209 near Bigfork.

Commissioner Gary Krueger wondered whether the west end of West Reserve Drive, from the roundabout near Glacier High School to Farm to Market Road, would qualify. He asked state officials to supply crash data for that stretch of road.

“We don’t have good east-west connector roads,” Krueger said.

Traffic data for the three roads suggested by state officials were given to the commissioners.

Those reports showed Montana 206 is the most heavily used secondary road, with a weighted annual average daily traffic count of 4,216 vehicles. There were 102 crashes on the highway between Woody’s and Big Sky Waterpark from 2007 through 2011, with no fatalities.

Whitefish Stage Road has an average daily traffic count of 2,953 vehicles for the nine-mile stretch from West Reserve to Montana 40. There were 59 crashes and no fatalities in the five-year study.

A final corridor study completed for North Fork Road in 2010 shows a weighted average of 280 vehicles a day on the mostly gravel road, which has a capacity of 4,000 vehicles per day, the study said.

Funding districts were set up by the 1999 Legislature to create a more equitable way of distributing secondary-road money starting in 2000. When the initial projects were completed, the state went through the process again in 2006, establishing more priority projects that are now being programmed for completion, Noem said.

The state has three pots of state money from which secondary-road improvements can be made: federal safety money, state maintenance money and the secondary federal-aid program.

Toavs said the state has used safety funds for some improvements on Whitefish Stage Road in the past, and this summer plans an upgrade of the road from its intersection with Hodgson Road north to Hammer Nutrition. That project will go forward regardless of whether the commissioners put Whitefish Stage on the priority list.

A state transportation improvement plan is slated to be finalized in late January or early February, Noem said, and the state would like Flathead County’s replacement project in place by the time the plan is finalized in April.

The commissioners plan to further discuss the priority list at 10:15 a.m. Wednesday at the commissioners chambers in the main courthouse.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.