Montana History High School Elective Articles related to 4 lane expansion of U.S. Highway 2

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1 Montana History High School Elective Articles related to 4 lane expansion of U.S. Highway 2 $71 million earmarked for U.S. 2 studies, improvements By Sarah Cooke Associated Press Writer August 8, 2005 HELENA Some call it the life line of the Hi-Line. Carved across northern Montana in the early 20th century, U.S. 2 was once the state's premiere east-west route. And although the interstate system eventually changed that, motel manager Mike Williams and other business owners along the rural arterial say they still rely on it for everything from customers to supplies and networking. Location, location, location,'' said Williams, manager at the historic Evergreen Motel in Coram. This is a major route that goes through a national park. That's very important.'' Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who sits on two key committees in charge of highway spending, helped secure an estimated $71 million for improvements and other work on the route as part of Montana's $2.3 billion cut of the recently passed federal highway bill. Highway 2 is critical to the Hi-Line. These funds will help make the road safer and get us on our way to building 'Four for 2,''' Baucus said, referring to a campaign to expand the highway to four lanes. The state's total highway funding is enough to keep and create about 18,000 jobs over the next six years, and represents a 44 percent increase over the last highway bill, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Charity Watt Levis said. It's a great bill for the state,'' she said. Of the $71 million set aside for U.S. 2, about $30 million will go toward road improvements between Browning and the North Dakota state line, including $10 million in work east of Havre. Another $25 million will be used to reconstruct Two Medicine Bridge east of Glacier National Park and $6 million will pay for work on the highway in far northwestern Montana's Lincoln County. State Sen. Sam Kitzenberg, R-Glasgow, has pushed for expansion of U.S. 2 for years on the argument it would spark economic growth, particularly in depressed regions of eastern Montana. Opponents claim such a project is too expensive, but Kitzenberg and other supporters say the cost would be worth it. Last September, the state Transportation Department and Federal Highway Administration declined to support a fourlane proposal between Havre and Fort Belknap, instead backing an improved two-lane highway. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Havre native who took office in January, supports a four-lane U.S. 2 and used the issue as a litmus test in selecting a new Transportation Department director. Havre business owner Dennis Morgan said he's worried North Dakota, which has already expanded most of its U.S. 2 to four lanes, will realign its final section of the highway with Interstates 90 and 94 to the south if Montana doesn't commit to building four lanes. At that point, you can turn off the lights and throw away the key in central Montana,'' said Morgan. As a business owner that concerns me, as a resident of this part of the state that concerns me.'' Bob Sivertsen, president of the Highway 2 Association, said the Hi-Line cannot attract new businesses without an adequate transportation system. Its vast coal supplies and other natural resources will also continue to sit relatively untapped. We have so much to offer that if we had a decent transportation system then naturally you would see an upswing in business activity, as well as tourism,'' Sivertsen said. It would be very beneficial to the entire state.'' The final $10 million is earmarked to study the feasibility of expanding U.S. 2 from two lanes to four between Glasgow and the North Dakota state line, a highly charged and emotional topic that has sparked heated debate among the state's top officials.

2 MDT Director hears appeals for 4 Lane Hwy. 2 Written by John Plestina The department [MDT] does place a high emphasis on the Highway 2 Corridor, Tooley said. But, as everybody knows, highway funding is up in the air. He stressed that future Hwy. 2 construction comes down to resources and the MDT currently does not have the funding. Congress did pass a short-term fix to transportation, Tooley said. He added that he told Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., that a longterm fix is needed during a recent meeting in Sidney. Fort Peck Tribes Transportation Program planner Connie Thompson of Poplar and Mark Kurokawa of the Montana Department of Transportation in Wolf Point, listening as MDT director Mike Tooley makes a point. If we had a six-year highway bill, we would be able to plan for six years, Tooley said. The federal government funds 87 cents on each highway dollar. Right now, the department s [MDT] position is pavement maintenance, Tooley said. You re not going to see a four-lane from the state line to Glasgow anytime soon. There is just not the funding for that, Tooley said. MDT Director Mike Tooley Bruce Houle, a longtime member of the Culbertson City Council and Chamber of Commerce director, offered a possible funding source. He asked Tooley if it would be feasible to obtain bonding from banks for road construction and utilize state funds to pay for the debt. Houle compared the state paying off bonded indebtedness for highway construction to paying off a house. Establish a new bonding system. Don t use the state s money. Go after the banks and let the state pay it off, Houle said. Culbertson City Councilman Bruce Houle. (Photos by John Plestina) Several people told Montana Department of Transportation director Mike Tooley that a four-lane divided U.S. Hwy. 2 is needed for safety and economic development during the Highway 2 Association s annual fall meeting in Glasgow, Friday, Oct. 17. Needs that were cited for a four-lane highway included increased heavy truck traffic due to Bakken Oilfield development in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, including Roosevelt County. Tooley, of Havre and a former Montana Highway Patrol trooper who was stationed at Wolf Point, said funding is just not in place at the current time. There s plenty of money sitting in the banks. It s your dollars, he said. As far as highway bonds, we did bond the construction of the Hwy. 93 corridor, Tooley said. That did get some improvements to Hwy. 93 in a short amount of time. Highway 2 Association president Bob Sivertsen brought up House Bill 218, a bipartisan bill that passed both houses of the Legislature last year and was vetoed by Gov. Steve Bullock. It would have required the Board of Oil and Gas to administer an infrastructure grant program for oil and gas impacts and would have set up a $15 million annual fund to help local governments impacted by oil and gas development. He [Bullock] is still interested in infrastructure in eastern Montana, Tooley said.

3 There was a discussion about supporting a new $90 million version of HB 218 during the Great Northern Development Corp., quarterly meeting, Thursday, Oct. 9. The Eastern Montana Impact Coalition will draft a new and similar legislative bill, with a goal of obtaining as much as $90 million for needs in the 16 counties in eastern Montana. Sivertsen noted that North Dakota is far ahead of Montana with a four-lane Hwy. 2. They [North Dakota] have the oil revenue that we can t match. They re in the sweet spot in the Bakken, Tooley said. Sivertsen said there has been a study that would include a four-lane highway from the Montana/North Dakota state line to Culbertson and north along the current of Montana Hwy. 16 to the Port of Raymond at the Canadian border. Houle is a board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway, a proposed four-lane route to enhance business and tourism in several plains states. It would be comprised of several existing highways between Texas-Mexico border and the Port of Raymond, passing through Culbertson. 'YOU CAN T GIVE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF A HORSE RACE' Businesses on Hi-Line long for wider highway; traffic numbers don't bear it out By HOLLY MICHELS holly.michels@lee.net Aug 14, 2016 Photos by ADAM McCAW, For The Gazette HAVRE When Bob Sivertsen runs an auction, he makes a deal every 43 seconds. Over the decades he s unloaded everything from Western art to 4-H pigs. But there s one thing he hasn t quite figured out how to sell, even though he s devoted so much of his life to it the expanding of U.S. Highway 2 into a modern four-lane highway running the entire 667 miles across the top of the state. We have become the bottleneck for trade and free flow of traffic, Sivertsen said. The problem is the Montana Highway 2 is the only segment of the Highway 2 system that is not four lanes, yet we are the connectivity. Houle cited a four-lane highway in Mexico that encourages economic development and tourism. Mexico figured it out but Montana can t, he said. The MDT s Bainville-East project, four-lane beginning at Bainville and continuing to the Montana/North Dakota state line could begin construction in Tooley cited problems obtaining right-of-ways. He said it comes down to private property rights. Since its inception in 2001, the Highway 2 Association has been a strong proponent of the 4 For 2 campaign for a fourlane U.S. Hwy. 2 across the 666 miles that crosses Montana, for an adequate transportation system along the Hi-Line with safety, tourism, agriculture and the enhancement of energy and other economic development cited as reasons for the need. More than one-quarter of Hwy. 2 is in Montana. The route dates to 1926 and spans 2,571 miles across the northern continental United States in two segments. The western portion begins in Everett, Wash., near Seattle, continues through Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and ends in Michigan at the Canadian border. The eastern segment begins in New York State about 45 miles south of Montreal, Canada, and continues through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, ending at the border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. For additional information, contact the Highway 2 Association at Bob Sivertsen, who lives in Havre, is president of the Highway 2 Association. He's one of the main advocates for expanding U.S. 2 to four lanes across the state of Montana. ADAM McCAW, For The Gazette Driving from west to east, the road curves around mountains in northwestern Montana before dropping down into the plains past Glacier National Park and running through a region called the Hi-Line, named after the BNSF Railway track the highway mirrors. U.S. 2 then enters the Bakken oil fields before crossing the border into North Dakota, where it doesn t take too long for the at-times bumpy two-lane to split into a smoother, divided highway. Sivertsen thinks a modern four-lane road would bring more truck traffic to the top of the state and promote a robust economy through a part of Montana that is losing businesses and population. He believes it strongly enough he s spent his golden years doing things like hand-delivering surveys to every business along the road from Bainville to Troy. He s not alone in his quest. His Highway 2 Association has several hundred members. Their signs calling for 4 for 2 dot the region, mostly hung on or near buildings with boarded-up windows and peeling siding, structures that used to house

4 now-closed businesses Sivertsen argues could be thriving if towns only saw the volume of traffic a four-lane road would bring. But despite his best efforts, an expanded U.S. 2 isn t happening in the near or distant future because there just isn t a way to pay for it. What I m doing, I could be fishing, he said, drinking coffee on a July morning at a near-empty 4B s in Havre. But I want our younger generations to have the opportunity I had. Sivertsen s weathered skin, pale blue eyes and white hair under a worn straw cowboy hat give away his 78 years, many of them spent rodeoing and ranching. But age hasn t slowed him from passionately advocating for the survival of the small towns he grew up around. Raised south of the Bear Paw Mountains, Sivertsen can remember the the 1950s and 60s, when Havre's population grew at between 25 and 32 percent. The people in Havre never thought they d have a bad day again, he said. But then two interstates, I-90 and I-94, came through Montana in the 1970s. Havre s population dropped from 10,740 in the 1960s to 9,310 in Though the road is four lanes through North Dakota, there it runs through bigger towns with traffic that supported an expansion process started decades ago. But Sivertsen says the population won't grow without a bigger road. It s kind of the chicken-and-the-egg situation, said Mike Tooley, director of the DOT. The return on investment wouldn t quite meet what we d have to invest to do it. I understand, but I just don t see how turning U.S. 2 into a four-lane will really create the economic benefits that folks expect. Businesses along the highway One of those in the younger generation Sivertsen talks about is Chris Carpenter. On a hot Wednesday in July, the 40-yearold Carpenter was catching his breath during a rare slow afternoon at his service station in Chinook. He s lived in the area since the 1990s and used to build power lines before spending half a million dollars to open his shop two years ago in a town of 1,200 people. It s something you chew over for quite a while, he said of the investment. By spring this year Carpenter figured it made more sense to drop his part-time employee and operate the place mostly himself. I had guys want to come in and work, but I don t need to be paying someone to stand around for something I could get done, he said. That's not to say business is slow. On this day, 11 vehicles were in and out the door before noon. From March to July, he worked on about 485 cars, pickups and SUVs, making repairs and installing tires, which he sells daily. But if more traffic passed through Chinook, Carpenter could afford to add employees. A 4-for-2 sign sits just off U.S. 2 in the small town of Harlem. Before (Interstate) 94 was built, Highway 2 had 70 percent of the traffic, Sivertsen said. Then it flip-flopped. Truckers bypass Highway 2 for 90 and 94. U.S. 2 offers a more direct route from Minnesota to Seattle, plus connectivity to robust economies in Canada, Sivertsen said. And that survey he personally delivered back in 2002 showed business don t want to locate on a two-lane highway. A bill passed in 2001 and sponsored by former state Sen. Sam Kitzenberg of Glasgow called for Montana make U.S. 2 four lanes across the state but did not set aside money. It only directed the state to pursue funding and even limited the Department of Transportation to not spend resources on the highway that would jeopardize other state highway projects. Daily vehicle counts on the road are nowhere near what they need to be to justify an expansion, according to the DOT. If it was a bigger (highway), it would bring more into the community as far as people breaking down, he said. We could put a bigger truck stop in. It could help out considerably. It will bring more tourists this way. It will move business this way as far as trucking. Like so many in this region who cobble together several jobs to make ends meet, Carpenter added a gun shop to his garage as a second revenue stream. He also sells ammunition and fishing licenses. By July, he d sold about 300 guns this year. Every other day I ll sell a gun or two, which is pretty impressive for a small town, he said. Local support is strong, and Carpenter said he works hard to offer tires for less than what customers could find in nearby Havre. As far as people that live around here, they like to shop local, he said. But we need more traffic. Everything gets bypassed up here.

5 Paying for it U.S. 2 is part of the national highway system and improvements to the road are mostly funded by the federal government. This fiscal year the state of Montana has about $105 million to spend on all its national highways. State law says that money must be split between five highway districts; U.S. 2 runs through three of them. That s a lot of money, but when you think about it, that s a lot of highway, Tooley said. If you split that up now you re down to maybe $60 million that you could spend on every national highway in all three of those districts U.S. 2 passes through. There are 667 miles of U.S. 2 through Montana and the average cost per mile for reconstruction is about $1 million. We could put every dollar we have just into U.S. 2 and it s not really going to get anywhere as far as rebuilding that highway," Tooley said. It would cost $16 billion to handle all the highway transportation improvements Montana needs over the next decade, according to the DOT. And state and federal resources will only generate $4.5 billion. That math is what leads to Montana's approach: Our position is to maintain what we have, Tooley said. We won t see a lot of expansion of any national highway in the state. His grandparents were early settlers of Galata around the turn of the century. The town used to be bigger than Shelby and was vying for the county seat. It s essentially a ghost town now, but that doesn t mean there isn t traffic. Megaloads on the way to Canada have beat up the highway, especially at Gilford, 50 miles to the east. It's all this, Smith said, motioning up and down with his hand to signify bumps. And that s not that old of a highway. This is seeing more and more traffic all the time. You see those big loads and traffic backed up for miles. Some of these loads are huge. I saw a trailer with 30-some tires. That s why, though he thinks four lanes isn t feasible, the region should fight for any upgrades it can get. We need to find a happy medium that doesn t give you everything you want but gets you toward your goal of traffic flow and growth in these communities. It s the only thing the government is going to fund. Traffic numbers Data kept by the DOT tracks traffic on the road. The busiest segment, where U.S. 2 goes through Kalispell, sees an average of 16,397 vehicles a day. But the next heaviesttraveled stretch of road sees 56 percent less daily traffic, with 9,149 vehicles running through where U.S. 87 meets U.S. 2 outside Havre. And other segments of the road, like near Shelby or between Havre and Glasgow, see between 1,300-1,800 vehicles a day. A two-lane highway can accommodate about 15,000-16,000 cars a day, and U.S. 2 doesn t come close to pushing that limit, Tooley said. We just don't have the traffic on that route that makes it such a priority that we d want to spend that money on it. We re still well below that on any one of the stretches, even with the oilfield traffic. We don t see the sense in expanding to four lanes when you re running a quarter of capacity. We don t have that much money and I better spend it where I need it. Chris Carpenter, of Chinook, opened a tire shop in this small town two years ago. He says the increase in truck traffic an expanded U.S. 2 could bring would help his business. ADAM McCAW, For The Gazette Between summer thunderstorms just east of Galata at another service station, Jerry Smith, 64, said he understands the financial limitations. Four for Two is a grand concept, but in a practical view I don t know where the money will come from, he said. Smith isn t a stranger to a transportation campaign on the Hi- Line. Years ago he led the Montana part of a group that pushed to preserve Amtrak s Empire Builder passenger train. That s not to say work hasn t been done on the highway. Improvements have been made in the Havre area, and in 2019 and 2020 the department will do construction at Lowman east and west for 10 miles to add passing lanes. There s also an approved, but not-yet-funded, $28.5 million project to expand the road in the far eastern corner of the state. There the highway is part of the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway, a designation made by Congress nothing its importance as a trade corridor from Texas to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The corridor includes a bit of U.S. 2 from the North Dakota border to Culbertson, before it follows state Highway 16 to

6 Canada. The project would expand 8.6 miles of the road the road to four lanes from Bainville east, creating more segments of the so-called Super 2 once there s funding. Political hot potato Sivertsen called out the state Legislature for failing to pass an infrastructure bill for the last three sessions. Most infrastructure proposals, however, have only dealt with road improvements in the Bakken region. We haven t been able to get Montana to step up to the plate and adequately fund our infrastructure and highways, he said. It s been five years now the Legislature and the governor have not adequately funded infrastructure. expand huge portions of U.S. 93 to four lanes for that exact reason, Tooley said. In North Dakota, a number of their larger communities, Williston (population 15,000), Minot (46,000), Devils Lake (7,200) and Grand Forks (55,000), are on U.S. 2. It makes sense for them to expand their capacity because people were pushing the limits as it was for the use of U.S. 2 on the North Dakota Hi-Line, Tooley said. But Montana isn t built that way. He also criticizes his own group for not pushing hard enough. When you point a finger at the Legislature, you get three pointing back at you. If we go into the Legislature more united we will get funded. He thinks money to pay for a new road should come from taxes on oil and gas production in the state. Cities and towns in the western and southern half of the state feel entitled to those funds, he said, but U.S. 2 takes most of the oil field abuse. But he sees why politicians pander to those morepopulated regions. If you take western or southern Montana they all think the money should go there. Candidates are going to go where the votes are, he said. We have been neglected or ignored. An old motel along U.S. 2 in Galata. ADAM McCAW, For The Gazette Though more miles of U.S. 2 are in Montana than any other state, it only passes through one major town, Kalispell, at 20,000. The next closest is Havre, with fewer than 10,000. We just don t have the population in those areas that s going to require a four-lane highway anytime soon, but we do watch that, Tooley said. Because of the state law calling for expansion, the road is reviewed frequently and Tooley meets annually with residents along its route. While segments of the road are being improved or expanded, Sivertsen doesn t want to compromise he wants the whole road to be four lanes from one end of the state to the other. That s not a long-term solution, Sivertsen said of pushing for just an improved two-lane road. If you re satisfied with just upgrading the highway in population centers, you re not going to get the economic development. Jerry Smith, who ranches in Galata, talks about heavy truck traffic on U.S. 2. Pointing to neighboring North Dakota, Sivertsen said governors there have had more foresight to build a road that meets transportation needs. Over the last four decades, the road there has expanded to four lanes across the state. But the Montana equivalent to North Dakota s stretch of U.S. 2 isn t our segment of the same road, Tooley said. It s U.S. 93 on the west side of the state, running from Hamilton to Missoula, Polson and Kalispell. He said he thinks the problem is an anti-business climate. I m so bullish on Montana. We ve got everything the rest of the world needs. We are energy, we are agriculture, we are tourism. The real justification for what we want to do has to do with Montana s economy and revitalizing the state. It just takes an attitude and a decision we can do this, Sivertsen said. To do nothing is not acceptable. We haven t made the progress I d hope for, but you can t give up in the middle of a horse race. All those communities were seeing the types of traffic there on U.S. 93 that North Dakota was seeing on U.S. 2 so we did