HIGHWAY 191 — Freshly paved and safer roads. The Montana Department of Transportation just completed working on Highway 191.
“The stretch of Highway that we’ve been working on, 191’s been need of repairs for a couple of years and we’ve kind of done some basic maintenance on it just to get us by," explained Project Manager Paul Cogley. "But fortunately this summer we’ve been able to put on what we consider an overlay on the highway project."
Twenty-three miles of roadway improvements are finally finished from Tepee Creek Trailhead to Rainbow Point Road, roughly from Big Sky to West Yellowstone.
“A year ago if you would have driven down there you would have noticed there was a lot of cracking along the highway. We also had a lot of potholes that were developing, especially where water would get into the roadway and then freeze and break apart,” Cogley said.
But that’s not the case anymore.
“What you’ll find today if you drive the road is a clean slate. The road’s been overlaid with effectively new asphalt,” he said.
Before, drivers traveling along that 23-mile stretch of the highway could experience multiple delays as crews blocked one of the two travel lanes to work.
“We knew that there was going to be some disruption and we had some width restrictions down there along with delays during that construction. We really tried to keep that to 15 minutes or less. There were a couple of snags where there were some longer delays,” Cogley said.
But now that’s in the past, now drivers can enjoy the view from Big Sky to West Yellowstone without any construction delays.
If you plan on driving along Hwy 191 in the next couple of days, don’t be surprised if you still see construction crews and workers present as they are doing finishing safety checks and making sure everything is working properly.
There is still construction going on right outside Big Sky as crews quickly work on a separate project.
