Last week, Shailen Bhatt, the Federal Highway Administrator, announced a $22 million grant to widen the road and add parking and a pedestrian trail in Yellowstone National Park. According to officials, this is a key to movement between the north and south of the park.
“Part of our challenge as a nation is that much of our infrastructure was designed in the 20th century for traffic volumes, and particularly, the climate of the 20th century. We’re just getting rain events, these 500-year floods, that don’t happen every 500 years; they’re happening on a regular basis,” Bhatt said. “…We do need forethought; we do need a plan. So, whether it’s the new bridges that are going in through the work that we’re doing together, or this project, we do need to build infrastructure for the 21st century.”
The funding will go toward a project near Rustic Falls, with the goal of replacing and widening approximately 0.7 miles of road. The project also calls for blasting a large rock wall on the west side of the road to alleviate rockfall hazards.
Over 95,000 tons of rock will need to be removed off the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff from the cliffs on the western wall of Golden Gate Canyon.
"You don't take out 90,000 tons of rock without blasting," Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly said in an interview with Cowboy State Daily. According to Sholly, the viaduct and road in the project area were rebuilt multiple times but have stayed the same for the past 50 years.
This is part of nine projects with a price tag of more than $370 million in bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Job Act (IIJA) funding.
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Source: Cowboy State Daily, Idaho Capital Sun
