spinnaker

Why are bicycles restricted on much of the shore of Lake MacDonald between 11am and 4pm?

Is the road really that narrow along that stretch for the volume of traffic? There was no room to widen it?

jamawani 

Why are bikes banned on the Lake McDonald stretch of Going to the Sun Road?
(Pardon a moment while I get my soapbox set up . . . )

Going to the Sun was built mostly in the 1920s - finished in 1932.
Even though it was an engineering marvel for its time, it is narrow in many places.
One of these places is along Lake McDonald. The road is quite narrow with no shoulders.
Lake McDonald - like all of Glacier's big lakes - is a glacial lake with steep slopes.

Of course, cars and.especially, RVs are wider than vehicles in the 1930s.
And they go a lot faster - gotta get through the park in record time, no?
And cars always win out - even in national parks.

spinnaker

Ok so you are squeezed between the mountain and the lake then I would assume?

Yes I did know the road has been there for some time just wasn't sure if there was room to widen the road. Guess not.

Doug64

I believe there might be room to widen the road adjacent to the lake. They were doing a lot of construction in 2013 when we rode down form BC to my daughter's place in Kalispell. We visit the Park every time we are over there. We have XC skied a lot of that lower country and it did not seem like road widening should be a major issue (physically). There may other reasons for not "improving" the road. There may also be some pinch points that we did not see; I was not thinking about road widening at the time

jamawani 

But why? Why widen a park road in a magnificent setting -
when the RVs will just get bigger and bigger?

BTW - Glacier N.P. also limits the size of RVs that can use Going to the Sun.

Doug64

I agree, that is why I said there was no physical issues, and put "improvement" in quotation marks.

MiRoLa

This is a fun ride.