STEVENSVILLE — We first brought you the story of Bitterroot residents sharing concerns about a proposed roundabout on U.S. Highway 93 South near Victor in April.
The Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) hosted the first of three open houses on the Bell Crossing roundabout in Stevensville on Tuesday.
“It's not the first place in Montana that we're building a roundabout on a multi-lane highway. It's not the first place in Montana we're putting a roundabout on a 70-mile-an-hour highway,” stated MDT Missoula District Administrator Bob Vosen.
MDT found after performing a traffic study that the intersection of Bell Crossing and U.S. Highway 93 near Victor was dangerous. They plan to make the area safer by adding a roundabout.
“The roundabout, the numbers from a safety standpoint, it's significant,” said Vosen.
Vosen told MTN that a roundabout would slow down the traffic flow, which would help cut down the amount of high-speed, t-bone crashes.
"We need to eliminate opportunities for drivers to make poor decisions. You can run a stop sign or you can run a signal. It's really hard to run a roundabout," he said.
MDT hosted an open house at Stevensville High School to provide people with more information about the proposed roundabout.
“What we really want to know is if they've got specific concerns, what those concerns are so that we can try to address as many of the concerns as what we can to make this roundabout work for this intersection as well as it can,” explained Vosen.
"I can sit at my dining room table and look out and see what's going on out there and it's crazy," said attendee Jim Martin who has lived a half-mile from the crossing since 1973.
He is worried about trucks maneuvering through the curves.
“It's gonna have to be big enough for semis pulling pups, the lumber yard on the corner, the power company,” Martin elaborated.
Vosen shared that the design will take large trucks into account.
“We recognize that [the] trucking industry is a key component to the users of our highway system. So we need to design these things to, to meet the needs of all the users,” he said.
MDT will be going forward with the roundabout but is just in the planning stages of the project and wants all the feedback the agency can get.
“Every time we build one, we want to make it better. We want to make any improvements we can,” noted Vosen.
The funding for the project will come from state gas tax dollars and the Federal Highway Administration. Vosen added that a construction and design team has not been identified yet. However, he did share an estimated timeline.
“Hopefully, we can get design going on through the winter and get into construction next spring.”
Anyone with an opinion on the proposed roundabout for Bell Crossing can check out one of the open house meetings.
Upcoming dates are:
- Wednesday, August 14 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
- Thursday, August 29 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.
All meetings will be held at Stevensville High School at 300 Park Avenue.
Learn more about the project at https://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/bellcrossing/.
