The Blaine County Journal News-Opinion - We've Got The County Covered

Some may cheer while others may groan at the news that the Montana Transportation Commission (MTC) received during a conference call meeting on September 17: The ten mile road project from Chinook to the west will finally get finished.

According to District 3 MTC member, Greg Jergeson, the project will be configured so that motorists will see two, five lane passing zones. “These passing zones will enable traffic to clear reasonably well,” Jergeson said. “In the interest of safety, there will also be eight foot shoulders and gentle slopes. Another thing we discussed during Tuesday’s meeting is that we don’t want to be left trying to navigate an unpaved road in the wintertime, like what happened at Galata,” he added.

Although preliminary work with utilities will start this fall, the construction will actually begin in earnest next year when crews come in to start breaking ground. While much of the dirt work will happen in the spring and summer seasons, the project will continue through the winter when construction crews won’t have to battle the complications that occur with irrigation. “Crews might need to use heaters to cure concrete when working through the winter, but they won’t have to worry about getting around all that water,” Jergeson explained.

Jergeson described the project as the “most expensive stretch of road,” costing almost three million dollars a mile. “This is a 28.9 million dollar project,” he said.

The features that contribute to this cost are not only Highway 2’s proximity to the railroad and the Milk River but the many creeks and canals and irrigation systems used by agriculturalists. “Those features and the generally terrible soils in the Milk River Valley all add to the cost and challenges of a road project like this,” Jergeson said.

For those who travel east out of Chinook, the stretch of Highway 2 from Chinook to Harlem is on the Ten Year Plan. It won’t see any construction until 2023, according to Jergeson.