Push to improve Highway 232 is launched

For more than a decade, Lee Morse has been trying to improve conditions on Montana Secondary Highway 232 from The Port of Wild Horse on the Canadian border to downtown Havre.

He said 10 years ago, he was told funding might be ready by 2014 and 2015.

Now, he says, he’s been told the money might be available by 2030.

Fighting the battle alone hasn’t worked, so he says he’s now reaching out to the community for support.

Morse is calling a community meeting for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov, 18, at Hill County Electric Cooperative’s Hospitality Room to mobilize support for the highway improvements. He’s urging anyone in the community to join in his efforts.

The secret to making the improvements, he said, is to upgrade the classification on the highway. It is now part of the state system, and the best way to improve it is make it part of the national highway system.

That’s a long process, he said, and it begins with the Hill County commissioners who have been reluctant to make the move, he said.

If commissioners decide they want to upgrade the status of the highway, they have to take the matter to the Montana Department of Transportation, which has to go to the federal government.

The advantage to the change is that the highway improvements could be made much easier.

The roadway isn‘t properly marked and, it’s not paved well enough, making it difficult for people unfamiliar with the road, he said.

“Try driving it on a foggy morning,” he said.

In addition to making the road safer, upgrading it would make it easier for traffic to come to Havre from the border.

He said Canadian and U.S. officials don’t want to keep the Wild Horse port open more hours a day because the highway system doesn't encourage people to use it.

And Montana and Hill County officials don’t want to make improvements to the highway because there is not enough traffic because the port isn’t open more hours a day.

“It’s the chicken and the egg,” he said. “Somebody has got to move first.”