KALISPELL — An open house was held Tuesday night at Smith Valley Public School in West Kalispell as the Montana Department of Transportation shared the conceptual design of a new roundabout at the Batavia Lane and US Highway 2 West Intersection.
“We’ve got the conceptual design we’re sharing with folks today; we want to make sure we are not missing anything big, get some ideas, just share with the public where we are,” said Montana Department of Transportation District Administrator Bob Vosen.
Vosen said the conceptual design — which features a three-legged, single-lane roundabout — is 75% complete.
He said they studied years' worth of crash data at the intersection and deemed it high-risk for severe crashes with its current speed limit at 45 miles per hour.
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“We had a crash trend that involved some rear-end crashes, some right angle or maybe a T-bone type crashes, just a lot of challenges to the intersection,” added Vosen.
MDT worked with first responders, the trucking and logging industry, and school officials to make sure this roundabout design was their best option.
“Obviously safety of the school where we are at right now is key but there’s a lot more to the intersection than just the school,” said Vosen.
Tim McEntire — who works for the Montana Logging Association — has worked closely with MDT providing input on the future roundabout.
“Designs look pretty good for what they want to do here, our memberships have some concerns, and I’ve voiced them with people here and they seem to be receptive, so I think we’re going to have a positive outcome out of this,” said McEntire.
Smith Valley Public School Superintendent Dawn Matt said the school has had to change their pickup and drop-off times to keep up with the growing traffic at the intersection.
“There’s a lot of traffic, we have had to adjust our schedules so that the traffic flows and everybody doesn’t get released at the same time otherwise you have a bottleneck, so we’ve done that,” said Matt.
She hopes the future roundabout will slow things down at the intersection.
“And that’s a big thing for kids and staff, I mean because our staff put their lives on the line every day making sure those kids cross and that they’re safe.”
Construction of the roundabout is projected to start in 2027. More information on the project can be found here.
