Road issues

My wife and I are frequent visitors to Whitefish and have been for a number of years. For the first time, I felt it necessary to write and express my feelings regarding the road-surfacing in and around Whitefish this July.

We often hike up to the summit of Big Mountain, and I ride my bike up to village at Big Mountain at least twice a week. So I was extremely pleased and impressed with the new road up to Big Mountain village. It is a high quality and much needed upgrade. But this was sadly tempered by the very poor job done when the top and bottom parts of Big Mountain Road were resurfaced.

At the bottom, there are tire tracks imprinted in the then-soft asphalt that vibrates the car just as it would if you veered off the road onto the vibration warnings. Areas of the resurfacing are just missing with bare patches all over the place, and the overall resurfacing is uneven.

Add to this that parts of the white lines on the outside of the road look like they have been painted by some inebriated person, and the overall job is extremely shoddy.

The top of the road is no better, and the car vibrates no matter where you steer as there are virtually no smooth parts of the road. When I ride my bike on the newly resurfaced parts, it feels like I'm riding over a cattle grid.

Head north on U.S. Highway 93 and turn left on Twin Bridges Road and it's the same story — a very poor job of resurfacing. Today (July 30), we are leaving town and noticed that Wisconsin Avenue had been partly resurfaced. I sincerely hope they do a better job there than on Big Mountain Road and Twin Bridges Road.

I don't know how the resurfacing is funded, whether it's local, state, federal or a combination, but the job is so poor, they need to be told so and asked to return and do the job correctly. Not only is it a shoddy piece of work, but aesthetically it looks awful. Whitefish deserves better.

Michael Saif

Kansas City