Truckers on 35 pushing East Shore residents
Don Schwennesen
As the clean-up continues from the latest fuel tanker wreck and gasoline spill on Highway 35 next to Flathead Lake, I wish to thank state transportation Director Jim Lynch for at least looking into better ways to control truck traffic along this narrow winding east shore road.
As former operator of a Kalispell concrete business, he is familiar with heavy trucks and may be in a position to talk some sense into truckers.
A couple of decades ago, when more than 900 east shore property owners signed petitions to make the east shore a scenic highway, Spook Stang chaired the legislative committee that killed the bill.
The committee room for the hearing that day was packed with truckers and their lobbyists, so it's no surprise to see Spook now working for the motor carriers to defeat any regulation. He's still trying to whip up fears that all trucks might be banned from the highway, when past proposals have always exempted trucks hauling cherries and making local deliveries.
The latest fuel spill is no surprise. I have lived 28 years on Highway 35 and drive it regularly. For months I've noticed that certain truck drivers have grown more belligerent and cavalier.
I have no complaint with chip truck drivers, who seem still to drive at moderate speeds and respect other motorists. But a few operators of logging trucks, interstate flatbeds and fuel trucks are giving their industry a bad name with their high speeds and reckless antics.
I was following a double fuel truck a few weeks ago (not the one that wrecked last week) when the driver passed another vehicle on the winding uphill Crane Mountain grade where there was insufficient room to pass and the speed limit drops to 45 mph. He was over the double line near the crest of the hill when he completed his pass. Fortunately, the driver he was passing slowed down, and no one was coming the other way.
Where do fuel companies find drivers like this?
I regularly hear the bellow of air horns echoing down my stretch of highway, when some speeding trucker works himself into a dudgeon because some resident has dared to enter the highway from one of the scores of driveways, many with limited visibility.
Even at moderate speeds, drivers of some doubles find it difficult to control their pups, which swing from center line to shoulder, kicking up clouds of gravel and dust at times into the windshields of the cars following.
My son recently encountered a smaller truck coming down the curving Woods Bay hill in the wrong lane. He was nearly forced into what passes as a ditch at that point. He called the firm that owned the truck and gave them an earful. He was told the driver was new.
When signs prohibiting jake brakes went up at Bigfork and Woods Bay a few months ago, certain truckers took it as a challenge to use their jake brakes as loudly and as often as possible, as if to punish the neighbors who had the bad luck to be closest to the signs.
One of the Bigfork signs was nearly in front of property we own, and the churlish antics were obvious. Since then, the sign has disappeared. It looks as though someone threw a chain around the post and jerked it out.
These are just things that I've observed. Don't take my word for any of it. Ask any east shore resident, and you'll get plenty more anecdotes. Most are less charitable to the truckers than am I.
The Montana Highway Patrol has recently increased patrols on this highway, which is good, because truckers are not the only speeders. But the troopers never seem to pull over any trucks. Probably the truckers warn each other by radio. Better enforcement tools are needed.
The state highway department has gone through a very public multi-year process aimed at upgrading and improving the 10 miles of Highway 35 south of Bigfork, replacing the Swan River bridge at Bigfork due to earthquake risks, adding a bike and pedestrian path and doing other things to widen shoulders and increase sight distance. I served on the volunteer citizen advisory committee. The study isn't even finalized yet. But after a couple million dollars in consulting fees, the state engineers quietly announced last summer that there was no money to continue the project because Highway 93 improvements were costing too much.
Bottom line: Highway 35 along Flathead Lake will remain a narrow rural residential road for years to come. It is inadequate for heavy truck traffic. It is unsafe for unprofessional truckers who insist on speeding and being scofflaws.
Highway 93 on the west shore of Flathead Lake is a federal highway, built to higher standards, with wider lanes, passing lanes, fewer driveway entrances and a higher speed limit. Truckers who are compelled to go faster should use Highway 93.
The residents along that highway don't want the mavericks and scofflaws, either, and who can blame them? But Highway 93 is far more suitable for larger, heavier, higher-speed trucks, because it was built for them. How many fuel and hazardous materials spills have there been on Highway 93? The number zero comes to mind.
Though the scenic highway bill got run over back in the 1990s, it did some good. Some trucking outfits cleaned up their acts. Chip trucks slowed down noticeably. After a near-collision one winter between a school bus and a jack-knifing semi just a few hundred feet north of my house, truckers even agreed (for a time) to stop using Highway 35 during school bus hours.
Now, truckers once again need to take responsibility for their industry, get rid of the bad actors, and start paying the good ones decent money so they will respect others and not risk lives trying to beat soaring costs.
There are already many east shore residents who would like to revive the scenic highway movement.
Don Schwennesen
19290 East Shore Route
Bigfork, Montana 59911
406-982-3401