Bids for a major highway construction project on the Hi-Line will open this fall.
Greg Jergeson, Transportation Commissioner of District 3, said the contract will be for the reconstruction of a 10-mile stretch of Highway 2.
The section starts a few miles outside of Havre and extends east to Chinook’s city limits.
“It will be wider. It will have eight-foot shoulders. All of the borrow pits will be nice, gentle slopes,” Jergeson said.
He said it is expensive to build or restore a highway along the Milk River due to the environment. The river, railroad, bridges, creeks, and irrigation canals can make expansion difficult.
“All of that is an engineering challenge for the construction companies to accommodate when they are reconstructing on this highway between Havre and Harlem,” Jergeson said.
The 10-mile stretch could be a two-year project. After the section between Havre and Chinook is complete, crews will focus on redoing 20 miles of Highway 2 between Chinook and Harlem.
“It will be three different projects and probably span over a period of ten years,” Jergeson said.
He added that Highway 2 reconstruction was a long time in the making.
“The new highway will be a lot safer than the existing highway that averages about 3,000 vehicles per day,” Jergeson said.
