The Billings Area Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan has received varied recommendations from the involved government agencies that comprise the PCC. The City/County Planning Board recommends approval of the plan to the Policy Coordinating Committee. The Board of County Commissioners recommends denial of the plan. The City of Billings tabled the Plan and does not have a vote. The Montana Department of Transportation will provide its vote during the Policy Coordinating Committee meeting.

Given these differing recommendations, the PCC is asked to consider the full scope of the plan, along with the input received, and determine whether to approve, modify, or deny adoption of the Billings Area Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan. Staff has recommended approval of the Plan since the review and recommendation process started with the Technical Advisory Committee on January 30 as the Plan is the best current and available data from the community on multi-modal needs, it recommends useful connections, serving a wide variety of people, increasing the safety and health of the community, enabling efficient and sustainable implementation, and expanding transportation choices.

The Billings Yellowstone County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) starting in 2023 conducted a Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan (Plan) with Alta Planning + Design as the prime consultant and Sanbell as the sub-consultant. The Plan sought to identify and prioritize projects that will improve the safety and convenience of walking, biking, and rolling in the Billings area, and establish strategies for implementing the projects and programs in the future. 

The six chapters of the Plan cover the following topics:

• Chapter 1: Introduction, Vision & Goals
• Chapter 2: Progress Report
• Chapter 3: Existing Conditions
• Chapter 4: Community Input
• Chapter 5: Recommendations
• Chapter 6: Implementation Strategy

The Plan sets out several goals of the Billings Area Pedestrian and Bicycle system, including making useful connections, serving a wide variety of people, increasing the safety and health of the community, enabling efficient and sustainable implementation, and expanding transportation choices. Chapter 3 evaluates both the Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress and Pedestrian Level of Traffic Stress which is a network-wide data-driven analysis of roadway segments and how safe it feels to walk or bike on or along them. There is also documentation of existing facilities and pedestrian and bicycle counts. Chapter 4 reports community participation, which included 201 survey responses, 375 map comments over two phases of public outreach, and the results of an in-person poll. Top themes from the survey included infrastructure improvements, connectivity, and safety.

The recommendations in Chapter 5 are split into two categories: High Comfort and Supplemental. While the specific type of facility is not specified, some of the high comfort routes will be shared-use paths and provide high comfort facilities for pedestrians. Additional possible types of facilities include neighborhood bikeways, bike lanes, buffered bike lanes, and separated bike lanes. The decision as to the exact facility type will be made during design with the goal of providing a facility for users of all ages and abilities. Supplemental facilities will be bike facilities that help make a connection, and will likely consist mostly of striped bike lanes and shared lane markings. Recommendations also include suggestions for programs and policies that could make walking, biking, and rolling safer and more appealing in the Billings area. The final chapter uses prioritization criteria established by the steering committee to group projects into four buckets including short term, high priority; long term, high priority; opportunistic priority; and low priority.  

This plan was developed to provide additional flexibility when implementing facilities. The 2017 Bikeway and Trails Master Plan identified specific facility types, such as shared use path, bicycle boulevard, bike lane, and buffered bike lane which City Public Works felt was too restrictive at the master plan level. By identifying the high comfort facilities and supplemental facilities, this plan provides flexibility to the designer to select a facility type that will serve the desired user group. In the case of high comfort facilities, the goal is to serve people of all ages and abilities. This could result in more shared use paths built over the 2017 plan as there is strong support in the community for shared use paths. 

While the County is included in this plan because it is part of the MPO, the plan mainly focuses on the City. As clarified by the disclaimers on p. 2, this document does not obligate funds or mandate the development of any projects in the plan. This plan is a blueprint for how the system would ideally be built out if the governing bodies choose to implement it, and also helps to guide requirements for developers as part of the subdivision process. 
 

The entire Billings community and visitors are all beneficiaries of future improvements this Plan could make for the traveling public. Billings residents participated in the development of the Plan per multiple opportunities for public involvement and input. Billings residents expect the community to address safety, access, commuter and recreational travel for the public throughout the community via on-street and off-street facilities, as well as pedestrian crossings, school access, ADA compliant facilities, and other improvements to our transportation corridors and system. Further, opportunities for grants to fund some of these improvements rely on adopted plans with public input to be successful at the loca, state and federal levels.

Meeting and Process Benchmarks

• The Technical Advisory Committee comprised of City, County and State staff received a presentation on the plan at its January 30th meeting and forwarded a recommendation of approval to the local governing bodies and MDT.
• The Planning Board received a presentation on the draft plan and conducted a public hearing. There was no public testimony at the public hearing. The Planning Board members discussed several items at their meeting. One member was concerned about allocating more funding for shared use paths when there was already a maintenance shortfall. Transportation Planner Elyse Monat explained that this plan does not allocate funding; it is a blueprint for the ideal buildout of the system. She specified that there is a disclaimer in the plan that says this. The board member felt comfortable voting for the plan with this disclaimer. Members expressed several other concerns related to walking, biking, and driving in Billings in general that were generally outside of the scope of the plan. One member questioned if "mixing zones" where a bike lane ends temporarily due to a right hand turn lane were safe. Another was concerned about the pedestrian-activated flashing beacons on Shiloh Rd. and said that he could not see the flashers from the far side of the intersection and had to slam on his breaks several times to avoid hitting pedestrians. Ms. Monat said she could share these concerns with the Engineering Division. The Planning Board voted to forward a recommendation of plan approval to the Policy Coordinating Committee.
• The Board of County Commissioners of Yellowstone County received a presentation on the plan and voted to forward a recommendation of plan denial. They expressed reasons for this denial centered around the City's Complete Streets Policy being a waste of taxpayer money and that, based on their observations, they have never seen anyone using a bike lane. The Commissioners are in support of integrating shared use paths and Safe Routes to School improvements in future development. 
• The City Council received a presentation on the draft plan at its work session and had a couple of questions. Some of the comments included that Council Member Rupsis felt it was a good plan, but did not place enough focus on high comfort crossings. Staff later added a short discussion about including high comfort crossings on high comfort routes and that the latest design guidance should be referenced. Mayor Cole commented that the plan did not contain cost estimates for the projects. Ms. Monat clarified that because the facility type was not identified, the plan was not able to provide a cost estimate for each project; however, there are per mile costs for several different facility types included. Council Member Neese was concerned that connects to schools was not given the highest weight in the project prioritization. Staff later re-prioritized the top 20 project list based on this request and sent it to Council for review. The top projects did not change much, and there was no response from the Council as a whole, so staff kept the original list in the plan.
• At the regular Council meeting, a motion was made to table the plan indefinitely, and this motion was approved by a 7 to 2 vote. Tabling an item eliminates any discussion of the item being tabled.
• With this action, MPO staff did not have an opportunity to discuss the Council's concerns on why no action would be taken. After the Council meeting, two members of the Council reached out to ask for information such as how long the 2017 plan would be valid for, how differently staff would plan the development of these projects under this plan compared to the 2017 plan, what good it was if the City approved the plan if the County did not, and more. There was also a request for a list of pros and cons of adopting the plan. Staff provided responses to these questions via email via a list of pros and cons of this plan verses the 2017 plan. At the next Council meeting, this item was on the regular agenda as "unfinished business." The Council had the opportunity to vote to remove the item from the table and bring it back either for immediate action to the PCC or to move the plan to a future work session to discuss any concerns the Council had. There was a motion to remove the item from the table, however, the motion failed. There was no discussion. With no recommendation to the PCC, the City Council does not have a vote at the PCC meeting.

The Policy Coordinating Committee may:

• Adopt the 2025 Billings Area Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan; or,
• Not Adopt the 2025 Billings Area Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan. Not adopting the Plan places the community in an awkward position of having almost two years of updated analysis and public involvement in how the community may address multi-modal facilities that is not approved by the PCC. It creates issues with applying for grants and how the valuable data and input may be used to support community improvements to our transportation system.

This is a plan only, and adopting the plan does not obligate any entity to spend funds implementing the plan.  The contract for this plan was not to exceed $116,935. The Policy Coordinating Committee approved spending these funds in the MPO's 2023 and 2024 UPWPs, and the City Council approved the consultant contract to conduct the work. In addition, many hours of local staff time across multiple City Departments and other agencies and stakeholders was expended in the effort.