Joseph William Brand (October 3, 1925 – May 23, 2003) was an American politician in the state of Montana who served in the Montana House of Representatives. He was Speaker pro tempore in 1983 and from 1979 to 1981.[1][2] (wikipedia)
About this time a year ago we arrived at our recommendation based on the anticipated traffic that we were projecting for the K-7 corridor K-7 really needed to be a freeway facility in its ultimate condition.
There's just a whole multitude of existing access points along K-7 that need to go away over time.
We've also been looking into some new, innovative financing tools. We realize since there is no funding today that it will be some time before a freeway is built. There will have to be some interim improvements.
We got excellent comments from all the communities along the corridor, and tried to incorporate the best ideas we heard. Our recommendation of a freeway had mixed reviews. They do agree it's smart to preserve the right of way.
I don't see any funding on the horizon for a good number of years here. There's different ways to piecemeal this thing, but there just isn't significant monies now to do a freeway.
We're asking for each of the communities to review it and give us any feedback or comments that they might have. We've also been talking to each of the communities about what are some of the next steps. One of the first steps once the study is done is to establish a review committee.
