Good afternoon, everyone.

Um, we're gonna be delayed a few minutes as we're waiting for our uh illustrious Jeff um to join us who um was stuck in traffic and is delayed.

I guess we don't uh we don't need him for the first item.

So I guess we can call this meeting to order.

Marcy, do you have any concerns with that?

Yep, that sounds fine.

We can do that in the approval of minutes if you'd like.

So yes, we'll call um the June 24th Gallatin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee meeting to order.

Um, and we will move right into our roll call.

Mayor Morrison.

Here, Commissioner Bowdy.

Present.

Thank you.

Uh any manager Cardwell.

Commissioner Brown.

Here.

Do you know Leva?

Here.

Mark Eggie.

Present.

Jim Hansen.

Here.

We have six out of seven.

And just uh we were confused at the commission office about whether it was Commissioner Boyer or I, and I think it's me that we sent to this committee, but I think both of us got an invite, and so we were confused and our calendars got mixed up.

So if staff sending both of us an invite, you can just send one to me for the moment.

But thank you.

Great.

Thanks for clarifying that.

That was that was my understanding, but glad that you guys got it uh squared away.

Um we're moving on to our approval of our minutes.

Um is anyone willing to help us out with a motion for our minutes.

Move to approve the uh minutes from our March 25-2026 meeting.

Second, it's been moved and seconded.

Um, could you poll the board?

Mayor Morrison.

Hi.

Commissioner Bowdy.

Commissioner Brown.

All right.

Mark Eggie.

Hi.

Jim Hansen.

Hi.

Okay.

Minutes are approved.

Um, now moving on to public comment.

Um, so this is the opportunity for anyone that wishes to give public comment on non-agenda items that fall under the scope and purview of this body.

Um, do we have anyone online?

Yes, first up, we have Jennifer McFarlane.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

Hi there.

Um some of you know me.

Um, my name is Jen McFarlane.

I work at the Western Transportation Institute up at Montana State University, but I want to assure you today.

I'm speaking uh for myself and not be on behalf of the university.

Um I am addressing you all because you are the policy group for the newly formed MPO.

And um I have had several interactions this summer with construction zones um impeding my mobility through the valley.

Um on my bicycle.

So particularly the construction along Huffine on the new subdivisions west of town.

Um, there have been multiple days where there is no safe way for me to travel to my home, which is in four corners.

Um, and it is FWHA's guidance that there is clear um clear pathways for people outside of automobiles, provided.

And it does even address this in MDT's guidance, although it's more of a suggestion in MTD, MTD's, sorry, MDT's guidance.

So I'm hoping that as a policy developing board, the MPO will take into consideration strong language for ensuring that people um no matter what mode of transportation they are using can safely move through construction zones um and not be put into the line of danger or within to the work of the construction going on.

And that's all I have thank you.

Thank you.

Far from the first that we've heard raise that concern to the to the city and I'm I would be surprised if the county's to hear about this too.

So appreciate that.

Are we seeing any further comments comment requests.

I'm showing no request for public comment.

Okay.

Well we will close the public comment portion of of our meeting today and stall for time while we're waiting for um Jeff to join us.

Maybe an opportunity if there's any FYI or announcements that folks think that uh the public or members of this board would find useful to know.

I I guess I'll just share one that Jeff got to participate in as well.

So a couple weeks ago was the Montana festival and they had a period of a design challenge charrette and we submitted the you know the sort of esoteric enigmatic gallatin trail loop as a design project for them to make proposals and ideas around and um I know Jeff was more involved by the end but just wanted to give everyone a heads up that we tried to get as much uh free work out of that crew as we could on on some of those questions.

Yeah Mark did you have something?

I guess we'll just share out to the group that the uh the planning coordination committee um met on uh June 9th to discuss uh provided it provided updates on various uh transportation projects and planning initiatives that are uh underway um and just wanted to raise to this body's consideration that there does you know the the the PCC I think was its purpose was to facilitate cross-jurisdictional uh coordination among uh MDT Belgrade Bozeman County prior to the creation of the MPO um now that the MPO exists uh seems like there might be some some duplication there uh and efforts and representation among those entities but any case uh informative update session um lots of construction underway uh in and around the jurisdiction um do we have any updated ETA on when Mr.

Butts may join us no um mayor Morrison I I am curious uh about a follow-up question to your FYI um I had a question from my constituents about about that very same um bike loop and um kind of recognizing that there was an allocation of money to get started on the planning of that and um he was just curious about an update on um what progress or when when he could expect to see us start to dig into um that effort and uh yeah I'm curious if anybody here can help me get back to him on that.

I know Jeff might have information on when so we we there was money set aside to do a study um of really I mean we gave a projected route of where it could go but that's you know the study may show that there's a a more functional path um and I think they have Jeff and company have their ideas of of the timeline for that.

Thanks I'll I'll be sure to yeah connect with Jeff about that.

I guess if we're stalling for time I can share a couple updates from the the UTD's perspective.

So in the the short term uh we have uh reduced our bus service for the uh the summer um in the summer months when students are away um we reduce our frequency in the morning afternoon on all of our routes down to hourly um we'll resume our half hour frequency uh in mid-August when the students start coming back we do have uh a few uh server changes that are planned uh for this fall um roughly coinciding with the uh the start of the the fall semester msu um including connection of our pink line which currently basically runs from the walmart out to uh downtown Belgrade uh we're gonna connect that into the airport and then that's gonna continue when it gets back to Bozeman to downtown and up to MSU uh so we should have five runs per day connecting out to the airport very excited about that and then we are also expecting to bring back our late night service uh starting uh this fall as well um which can which provides connection between downtown and roughly the the university area um on the uh the weekends uh until the uh the bars close I'll just uh jump in and add that sorry oh sorry go ahead Jeff should be hopping on here soon I guess he just arrived at um seven easy so he should be hopping on shortly there he is apologies everybody I got stuck in traffic uh they're redoing seventh and uh about a 25 minute delay this is probably yeah no problem there's a there's a tough path finding um with some of the construction going on concurrently around the community um for your information we are we are through minutes roll call and and uh we're on to new business if you are prepared to start that next item uh yes I am I am ready here I have a presentation pulled up and again appreciate uh everybody's patience I will uh share my screen here and uh really get going okay amendment number one to our um existing sorry okay there have some some technical issues okay I got disconnected oh okay can you see my screen now, everybody?

We cannot.

Yeah, it seems like maybe I'm not sure if you're having any connectivity challenges.

Maybe now we're seeing it.

Okay, great.

You're seeing it now.

Okay.

It's trying for me anyway okay uh traffic everywhere problems.

Yeah, still not still not coming up.

Yeah.

Okay.

It appears as though I am having some connectivity issues.

Apologize.

I'm gonna try changing networks.

Unless can everybody see my screen okay now?

Nope, we can just see just see you.

Okay, great.

Sorry.

I keep getting on my side, I keep getting disconnected.

Um can you see it okay now?

There we go.

There we go.

Okay, fifth time is the charm, I suppose.

Um thank you very much.

I will try this again.

We are requesting an amendment to our existing work plan or unified planning work plan to move to 20,800 from our reserve funds into our long range transportation plan to pay for some exit some additional expenses.

Um what we have what we're requesting this money for is an additional $53,000 in work that has been done by the consultants.

This is broken up into some additional GIS work.

When we had a vacancy in the MPO, uh the consultants pulled together uh some of the GIS that we were working on at the time, which was out of scope.

They've done some additional work on the land use projections and uh verifying those, and then additionally staff requested um a more enhanced spring engagement for so some extra community engagement, and so the way that we are wanting to fund this additional costs is by um uh savings from when we had the vacancy and then additionally uh only attending one national conference this year instead of each member of the MPO attending a national conference.

Uh the MPO manager will not be attending a national conference, and then some additional minor work program reductions.

So we're going from 275,000 in consulting services to 295,000 and some change.

Uh we've taken this money from the reserve, 20,859.

And that will leave us with $59.19 in our uh reserve.

And so we are asking you today to consider the motion of approving amendment number one.

This has been reviewed by uh TAC, and they did recommend approval.

So with that, we'll uh open it up for discussion or any question.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for that.

Um any questions from members of the board?

Yeah, Mark.

Jeff, could you just clarify the the additional work that's being done around the land use modeling?

Just kind of curious what that is.

Yeah, basically we put a lot of effort into meeting with the different uh uh land use organizations and then recalibrating every one of the transportation analysis zones, and there were a few hundred of those that were relevant that we adjusted.

Okay, thanks.

Any further questions on this item?

I guess one more question.

Go for it.

In terms of the uh the updated TAS's and the advanced the additional GIS work that's been done.

Are there are there plans in place for those GIS resources to be published in a place that would kind of outlive the current planning effort?

Um I think I've seen a lot of times, and then it just like the plan's over and everything is chucked in the trash bin, and then five years later it's like starting from scratch.

Uh great question, Mark.

Certainly appreciate it.

This is something that has been pressing internally.

We have had in our work plan building up sort of our own internal GIS architecture and eventually making these public.

Um, however, we have limited staff time and resources and have not been able to get to it yet, but it is in next year's work plan as well.

So it's a priority that we're working towards, and um we're fine.

There's a lot of priorities.

Okay, another call for any questions on this item before we open it up for public comment.

Okay, seeing none.

Um, are we seeing any public comment requests on this item?

I'm showing no request for public comment.

Okay, we'll close the public comment portion of this item and bring it up here for a motion and discussion.

Is anyone able to help us out here?

And does anybody need the motion language again?

I will share a motion.

No, yeah, I have it.

Um, I'll I'll I move to approve amendment number one to the fiscal year 2026 UPWP.

Second, it's been moved and seconded.

Um, would you like to speak to your motion?

No, I think I think that it's done um uh reasonable work that is being done.

This is a good motion, it makes sense, appreciate it.

Um okay.

Could you poll the board?

Mayor Morrison.

Hi.

Commissioner Bodie.

Hi.

Commissioner Brown.

Hi.

You know Leva.

Hi.

Mark Eggie.

Hi.

Kim Hansen.

Hi.

So passes 66.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Jeff.

And I believe we're back to you for our second item.

Uh yes, great, thank you.

Next item that we have is a first review of next year's UPWP.

As a reminder, the MPO is on a federal fiscal year.

Um, makes things a little bit confusing, but um, we're getting ready to do our work plan, and this is a first review of it.

So I will jump into the presentation here.

Uh, this has already been reviewed by TTAC as a first review.

Uh, what we are asking for today, we're providing you guys an opportunity to look at our upcoming work plan.

What we have here, uh, receive any input that you may have, incorporate that before we bring it back next month for uh request for final approval outside of anything in our work plan, we would have to do an amendment request.

So this shows the schedule that we are working on, and if it's already been a T-TAC once, this is your first review.

It will come back next month after final approval with this board, it will then go to MDT and uh the Federal Department of Transportation to have their final review and make sure everything uh is meeting our requirements there, and that starts on October 1.

We'll have that by October 1 for the new federal fiscal year.

And what we have in our UPWP are a couple of different things here.

We're focused on the MPO work plan.

And so it includes the planning funds.

They're called PL funds, and that funds our two-person staff.

It's also funding rent and other operational expenses as well as the indirect costs we pay to the city of Bozeman.

In addition, one thing I think we're highlighting is that we have limited planning capacity.

FTA is also in here on the transit side of things.

So Streamline is using federal funds to pay for two or to help pay for two positions within their organization over there.

We have to have the long-range transportation plan that feeds into the transportation improvement program.

We're required to put our annual list of obligated MDT projects on our website, which is in the works and then the unified planning work program.

Here is our overall income that we have.

We get about 440,000 per year.

We have a little over 200,000 in reserve, plus the you know 59, 60 in unobligated funds.

One thing that is new this year is that the state is taking their share, which is just over $50,000.

So we're left with a little about $390,000 a year to pay for staff and our long-range transportation plan and rent.

So this shows the draft UPWP and the way that our staff time is allocated.

We have about a third of it to administration, and then public involvement and transportation data are the next following large tasks, followed up with the area transportation plan, the valley trail loop that we've been working towards.

So administration about a third of our time.

Staff training as funding allows, collaboration with partners, probably getting more into grant support as we get our long-range transportation plan.

Also, our benefit hours are tallied here.

Of our non-staff time, this table here shows all the expenses that we have.

I have highlighted three rent office operations and cleaning.

So we're going to talk with the city of Bozeman.

We will have to drastically remove or eliminate these, or ask our partners for support and about this amount in order to do our next long-range transportation plan.

What we have next year is reduced training for staff.

There's some training I'd like to provide that we're going to forego for now.

And then on the national conferences, instead of having the two each staff member attend, what we have here only one staff member to attend and some other reductions.

And then the UPWP will be doing that again next year.

It's reviewed annually.

We could also do it biannually.

So this includes developing the detailed UPWP as well as submitting the reports and then coordinating with partners.

The only cost we have here is the indirect costs that we pay to the city of Bozeman for hosting the MPO.

Finally, on public involvement, we are looking at continuing to improve our website.

And so, Mark, this goes to I think the question that you had and mixed with our data.

But we want to continue getting the website usable for for the public and a resource and continue providing transportation related information.

One thing that we're really going to focus on this next year is building out our e-notifications and potentially a social media presence.

That way, when we do our next long-range transportation plan, we will have an audience and also be able to have stuff to share with our partners to share.

Some of that is in here.

Proposing a thousand dollars in engagement materials.

This is a little bit reduced from where it would be.

This is for table and awning and other materials so we can go out and have a professional presence in the public.

Additionally, we have the uh cost that we're paying to the city of Bozeman for hosting.

Finally, or not finally, but next we have long-range transportation plan needs to be adopted by December of this year.

I plan on having that in November for you all with a December backup.

And $20,000 to fund that.

It doesn't mean we're going to fund to that amount, up to that amount we could pay for.

Uh transportation data, and so these core data sets that were required, the FHWA traffic counts as well as socioeconomic data that we develop for long-range transportation plan.

We're also doing bicycle pedestrian counts and trying to institutionalize those and then writing about what we learn on our website to contribute to the greater professional understanding there.

And then GIS continue building out those capabilities.

So we're requesting a return of the two continuous count stations.

We have uh licensing agreement for our software accounting, and then also indirect costs to the city of Bozeman that we pay.

And then area transportation plans.

We have the Valley Trail Loop, it's going to be a really fun study, partner-funded.

You can see the amounts there on the screen, and the MPO will be uh project managing that, and we will be using the federal PL funds to pay for the project management.

And then here's indirect costs to the city of Bozeman.

And then finally the transportation improvement program.

This will be developed with our long-range transportation plan.

This actually programs the federal dollars.

Once we get to a fiscally constrained project list, then it then moves over into the transportation improvement program.

And so we have a little bit of indirect cost to the city of Bozeman for hosting us.

And then finally, our reserves, we this is an area where we will hand uh put our extra money that we have.

One thing that I did note uh this year as we did the projections was that uh we are looking at a uh uh a potential shortfall uh for doing our next long-range transportation plan with our current revenue and expenses.

And so with that, I will open it up for discussion and questions.

There's a lot there, so thank you.

Great.

Thank you for that.

Um, I suspect there will be some questions on that one.

Um we'll open it up.

Yeah, Commissioner Brown.

Yeah, um Jeff, can you remind us about uh well maybe I'll say this as a statement to give my perception of history and memory, and then uh anyone who has a different perception or memory can correct me, but just on the administrative cost side, my perception and memory when we were negotiating this MPO was that the city advocated to house your position within the city um administratively, and so I uh and I I remember pulling a little bit in the other direction of saying should the MPO employ staff that's independent or should it have a broader scope than within the city department, and then we ultimately agreed to go along with the city's preference to have it in the your position um administered by the city of Bozeman, but so I say that as a statement of memory and perception with an eye towards if that's the case.

Uh I wouldn't be very I I both like I would just say that seems like the rent situation is totally between the MPO and the city, and um I wouldn't be very interested personally based on what I understand today in uh contributing county dollars towards the MPO renting office space from the city of Bozeman.

Yeah, I had a similar question seeing the number of times where indirect costs and I'm just trying to make sure that that is is equitable, fair, and a good use of of funds and whether there's a different uh yeah, I get I guess to kind of uh finalize that into a question for Jeff.

If there's what's the experience been like, is this feel like the juice is worth the squeeze, or should we really start antagonizing over trying to find a a different venue or different host?

Uh there's a lot there, and uh just speaking to strictly the financials with the current projections, we uh may have a difficult time funding our next long range transportation plan, which is a required document, and um if we are unable to fund that document, then we have a cost sharing structure in place.

However, uh staff is talking with uh internally with different departments in the city of Bozeman, and uh it's certainly something that we are having discussions about and are looking to resolve within the next few months here.

Um so hopefully that helps.

Jeff, are you but you're a city employee from an administrative standpoint, aren't you?

Don't you receive payroll through the city?

Uh yes, that's correct.

Okay.

Well, I I'll just throw out that um if you reach an impasse over the rent and utilities situation.

Um the county definitely has some flex space, flex office space that we could consider.

Um so I don't and I can't imagine we would charge.

I mean, how many, it's just an office, one office, isn't it?

Um we have two employees.

Okay, and so yeah, we use two offices, I suppose.

Depends on the setup.

Well, we have some unspoken for uh or unoccupied office space here in the courthouse that could be in play, and then we also have uh a whole floor at the old Farm Bureau building that hasn't been occupied or refinished yet.

Um that might uh like if if we want to have that conversation, it might incite like a larger um converse more existential conversation about the status of all those things, but anyway, just know that those are that option is out there and I can help facilitate that conversation if you reach a dead end.

Great, I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Um we plan on uh continuing the discussions internally, see what we can work out, and um that's a great offer from you, and so certainly take that forward.

Thank you very much.

And Jeff, I'll also mention if you are looking for alternatives.

Currently, the uh the UTD is uh receiving we have office space that's being provided through HRDC and a space sharing agreement in exchange for storing some of their vehicles in one of our facilities.

Um it's not guaranteed that that that may not be our long-term solution, and so you know, if you're looking for other options, you know, I would say touch touch base with Sunshine.

Um we uh are administered through HRDC as our fiscal agent currently, um, but are looking at some point to um to establish kind of our own administrative processes and there could be some uh there could be some benefits for the the UTD and the MPO um having like a unified fiscal agent.

Great, thank you for that.

Yeah, I have um see how quickly we can get this taken care of and where we need to go, but certainly I can have a conversation with uh UTD staff, so appreciate that.

Thank you.

Mr.

Bodhi, do you have a question?

Um yeah, I I really appreciate everybody uh troubleshooting this office space issue.

And I think that's definitely a much more meaty thing than what I'm about to say.

Um, but I I was just curious about the um table and awning supplies.

It's a it's a very small amount of one thousand dollars, but um I I know that the city of Bozeman has a lot of um engagement materials already and and has you know awnings and tables and things.

And so um my curiosity is if you're interested in getting like a particularly branded tent that says like MPO, um, or if it might make sense to utilize some of the supplies the city already has, or perhaps if you're moving into a county building, maybe supplies the county already has.

Uh thank you, Commissioner.

Really appreciate the question.

It's one that I think we will look at.

One of the things that we are trying to ensure is that when we're out there in the community, we are representing the larger jurisdiction as well.

And so trying to have an independent lens.

If there's a uh sort of blue awning without any branding on it, that would be great.

Um we will see we're housed right now with water conservation.

They have a lot of materials, anything that we could do, we would certainly be interested in reusing.

And we will have some expenses associated with um with that, but um look internally first, so it's certainly appreciate the suggestion.

Great.

Yeah, I I think um it's likely that there is an unbranded awning somewhere.

Um, and perhaps uh we could spend a portion of that on getting a really nice branded like vinyl banner to get that same kind of visual impression of a separate organization.

Right, yeah.

Well, we will work over it over the next uh federal fiscal year, so be after October one, but thank you for that.

Great.

Any further questions?

Yeah, Jim.

Yeah, thanks.

Um just a real question, quick question on the continuous count stations that you're cutting out.

Um I was just wondering um had a couple questions about the just from a technical perspective.

Um I mean, obviously we have to do certain reporting to the federal government and others regarding the thing so um what is the impact of pulling of not having those stations there anymore what information are they collecting like what type of counter information are they collecting just vehicles are they doing pedestrians bicycles and things like that a great question thank you something that we first uh looked at and to answer your last question first uh it's getting the 13 different classifications um the motorized classifications it does not include bicycle and pedestrian our purpose for getting these was to improve the modeling and improve the average annual daily traffic counts and they get a little wonky here but we put the count we put our traffic counts out for 48 hours and those are then adjusted because weather and other things can change it these continuous count stations are what give us that adjustment factor so we know where to adjust to the state has already installed two within the MBA there is one out on Jackrabbit and there's one at Baxter and love and so we're already getting those and then something else uh we had looked at the airport for this and so um maybe we can offset with some longer counts or something out there the other location we were looking at Huffline there's not any lighting so it was challenged we moved to 19th and MDT is gonna is discussing um installing counters when they upgrade the signals on 19th and so it may not be a loss it may just be a bit of a shift in how it's collected perfect thank you.

Great any further questions on this item um I have just one last quick one um Jeff I know you you got to oversee a bit of and I I while we were stalling for time talked about this briefly the valley trail loop concept they came up with at Montana Festival and didn't know if you had any uh updates from that or and I think Commissioner Bodie had a question about timeline of from a constituent and things like that if there's any just really high level things you'd want to share because it's gonna be it's gonna be cool.

Yeah thank you really appreciate that it was great seeing you and others there it was very inspiring they were calling it the Valley Trail story loop the valley story they were talking about stories and what I take away from that is we are looking at the large destinations Bozeman Belgrade Four Corners how do we connect those how do we get people where they need to go but out of this event there realized that we really should be working on the micro destinations as well the half mile and mile destination so people can use it for utility on short trips and stuff too so I think that's how the that's a big takeaway that I had um but overall it was really um yeah there's a lot I could certainly talk about but I I think that's the big one is looking at smaller OD pairs where we can sweet and when is that uh that study is beginning this fiscal year.

Uh yes that's correct we are um we were planning to release it around June however we want to make sure the long range transportation plan is good so once we get the long range transportation plan in a good solid point and we're aware you know we're comfortable that it's gonna be complete on time we are looking for uh probably a September start okay awesome any further questions before we open up for public comments?

Okay.

Um, do we have any public comments on the uh UPWP first review?

I'm showing no request for public comment.

Okay.

Um, seeing no further comments, we'll close the public comment portion of this item.

Jeff, do you have a motion for us or is this was was this just uh there's no action here?

There is no action requested today.

This is for information only.

If there's anything that you guys would like to change, this is an opportunity to add your suggestions, and we can bring back next month.

Okay.

Um any further discussion on the first review of the UPWP.

Okay.

Um seeing none, um, we can move on to Valley Spur.

Okay, all right, a fun one.

Uh they're all fun, but this is uh not required.

So I will pull this up here.

Can everybody see my screen okay?

Okay, I'm seeing some nods, and hopefully it's the right screen as well.

Uh so the valley center uh was something there's a long history to first came on.

The MPO uh was asked to write a report with our first unit UPWP, and so gonna give a high-level review of the report that was attached.

The real purpose of the report is to have a shared set of facts that we can all look at and identify potential paths forward.

And so the valley center spur is a small piece that connects um valley center to frontage road underneath I-90.

So it's one of 10 connections that go under the interstate.

Uh it's only about 560 feet long, but uh its impact is larger than that.

It is very narrow if you've driven it.

There's pillars on both sides, and so not a lot you can do with the width under there.

There was a history of crashes and MBT installed traffic signals in 2019 to address those.

However, there is a multimodal gap still, so no bicycle or pedestrian connectivity.

And so really this corridor has moved from an urgent motor vehicle need to an incomplete multimodal connection, and so how do we how do we begin advancing this?

It's a really complex issue.

I say it's fun because of all the complications involved.

First of all, we have the fact that it's in BNSF, um, right-of-way, and we have to deal with railroad preemption, make sure that no cars land or standing on the tracks when a train comes, those peers being so close together make it very difficult for um adding a sidewalk or a pathway or anything through there.

The fact that there's multiple jurisdictions with multiple different interests, uh, some of them polar opposite interests, and then there's still different views on the fourth uh leg, a four-way connection there.

And so, uh, how do we move forward?

And one of the things, you know, as we talk about multimodal connectivity, we think about walking bicycling and emergency response really came up as being um uh showing, I guess that the motor direct direct route is the most effective route.

And so, what can we do in the short term?

I think uh one of the areas that we identified was advancing a limited crossing concept, and so there's currently not a pedestrian signal on this intersection to cross uh either uh will across frontage, and maybe we could look at that.

Perhaps some crossed uh or an enhanced, you know, just a marked crosswalk.

It'd have to coordinate with the signal timing and phasing, but could be possible.

And since we're doing that, you know, maybe we could also look at lighting, those could be some two small things longer term, a um bicycle pedestrian feasibility study.

Could include the underpass, maybe frontage road, uh, perhaps we could work a little bit of this into our valley center loop, but even though I think the scope could easily get beyond what we're looking for there.

Um, and as we do this, you know, we might want to look at a direct bicycle pedestrian connection over to the subdivision to the north there, and we have to hear railroad requirements, MDT would have to uh agree with what we find, and you know, be consensus, and so we could find planning level costs and funding and coordination with other plans, and so really this has just come from a place that has improved from uh a driving standpoint, and I think that this report outlines a lot of shared facts there that we can use for reference.

Um, and then maybe we could advance a uh limited crossing concept and then a bicycle pedestrian feasibility study moving from uh the past into a collaborative future, and so with that um I'll open it up for questions or comments that you may have on Valley Center and the report.

Yeah, yeah, Commissioner Brown.

Yeah, I'll I'll just I mean thanks, Jeff, for spending some time on this one.

Uh, this has kind of plagued all of us for years, predates me by a lot.

Um I'll share a couple of discussion points.

One is just an the anecdotal fact that I drive this quite a bit because my parents live out on East Valley Center Road and I live in the city of Bozeman, and I am shocked how often I see bicyclists um using that crossing.

Uh I wouldn't want to bike across the tracks there.

There's a lot going on at that intersection, but no doubt a shocking number of individuals do that.

Um, and then the other thing I'll say is and commissioner former commissioner Scott McFarland might have mentioned this when he was on this board, but we went out there and met with uh BNSF.

Um probably two or three years ago and looked at the site, and they had it was right when BNSF was taking over the right-of-way um from MRL, and they had a national crossing person with them who uh basically changed the narrative from what the county had heard from um Montana Rail Link for years, and she said, Oh, yeah, we do things like this all the time.

You could totally get a pedestrian crossing um system permitted through our process, no problem.

And and she was willing to help.

Um, so I just kind of throw that out there as and they're um Matt Jones, BNSF's government affairs person, just happens to live in Bozeman, and so they're relatively accessible.

Um so if we get into design and funding conversations, uh, I I just was I left that meeting a few years ago, encouraged that there was a possible solution.

Um, and then also the BNSF has um their fingers in the federal pot of the at grade rail crossing grant program that has funding attached to it, and the county's going after one of those grants right now with BNSF's help.

Um near the Bozeman Pass area, and so maybe that that grant uh is a possibility.

Um, so those are just my since I've never said those thoughts to all of you specifically, but you might have heard them from someone else before.

I wanted to throw them out there.

Yeah, thank you for that.

Um are there any other questions?

On the valley spur?

Yeah, Jim.

Yeah, thanks.

Um, yeah, I have a few questions, Jeff.

Just because I was trying to understand um some of what's going on out there.

Um, do we have bike ped volumes for that crossing?

Out of curiosity?

Do we know how many people are using that crossing at this point from a bicycle pedestrian standpoint?

We do not anecdotally have gone out there in the winter time and seen footprints and there is a bit of a path, like a desire line forming, but no formal counts.

Yeah, I noticed that the sort of the dirt path going over to the going going north.

I did sort of certainly see that.

So we also probably then don't know obviously the origins destinations or bike pads, the desire lines or um times of day or things like that that we're that we're looking at, right?

Okay.

Um and are we primarily just talking about a crossing across frontage road um or across both frontage road and valley center spur?

We'll be looking at both.

We haven't talked much about this.

From an operational standpoint, just going out there.

The challenge really seems to be crossing frontage road because you can always just go north and there's a trail.

So crossing valley center seems to be less of an issue on the north side on the south side, maybe different.

Sure.

Okay.

That sounds good.

I was I'm just curious.

It seems like there's a lot of you know, as you start thinking about putting in pedestrian crossings, what side of the road you put them on?

How do you look at turning movement counts?

When you're thinking about um the preemption for the rail tracks, um that's certainly a consideration because the way that the preemption for rail truncates immediately, unlike an emergency vehicle preemption, you actually have to start thinking about a pedestrian's crossing.

If you're trying to clear that, there's you could be a potential conflict with the pedestrian's crossing.

So if they're making a left turn or a right turn, depending on where they're stuck, the vehicles are and how they're going.

So I guess I would just say I would advocate for a pedestrian bicycle feasibility study before just putting devices in.

Um I think there's probably at least a minimal level of that to look at and understand how people are moving so that at least if we're choosing one side of the roadway versus another, that um that we're if we're putting only one crossing and that we're we're doing that.

And then I would obviously then assume that we're also looking at lighting and things that are appropriate for for that, or even additional warning signs for vehicles if there was a preemption, just so that um we don't create an additional conflict um that was unanticipated before putting a device in.

So cool.

Thank you.

Yeah, Mark.

Thanks.

Yeah, definitely uh a tricky spot, but also high priority spot.

I did want to mention that uh the Strava Strava Global Heat Map or Strava Metro data, um, does show a high volume of um of recreational users uh crossing their uh mostly connection connecting between Nelson Road and East Valley Center Road.

Um I know we don't have a lot of in-house GIS capability right now, but that data is available for free to the MPO if we wanted to better understand kind of the origins and destinations for that.

Um, you know, also looks like maybe there's a potential where you could establish a um a like path connection over to uh to Prince Road.

Um that wouldn't be a full vehicle connection that maybe could provide a uh a middle ground, at least people get people off frontage road for the time being.

But I think my my takeaway is like, man, this is it's it's tricky, and I think the recommendation around um, I don't know if I think coming up with the money for like a full corridor study uh might be might be a stretch, uh, but having uh a proper engineering assessment um to better evaluate the you know the the conflict points and the queuing and and all of that um seems like that might be a good first step.

I think like lighting uh makes sense.

I think everyone benefits from riding uh from lighting the uh the vehicle users, pedestrians, uh cyclists, um, but I also have some concerns about uh installing a pedestrian crossing there before the concept is fully baked.

Yeah, thanks for those questions.

Commissioner Brown, you got another one?

My other question is or related to just building off that conversation.

The city is annexing on the north side of the frontage road there.

Um, and so how does that fit into this picture?

Um, in terms of requiring or building out future pedestrian pathways sort of along the the Barnard property?

Um what's happening with the transfer station, just sort of that part of the city's growth trajectory, and how would that fit into this kind of discussion about a little spur crossing plan?

I will try to answer that.

The city of Bozeman is essentially north and south of this corridor, but within the corridor, it is um county, and of course there's federal highways running over it and a lot of uh people it seems uh MDT would be uh the one in charge of the uh access permit on to uh frontage road when they did the subdivision.

Uh there the city and the state had different uh desires there, but the pathway could potentially be a middle ground.

We haven't discussed that yet.

Um but pedestrians currently are having to walk a half mile out of their way, so it doesn't seem too practical.

Did that answer your question?

Maybe it I mean a little bit.

I think like where the transfer station site will be.

Anyway, I is just kind of thinking out loud and trying to think what's what's already there and what's gonna be there.

Um anyway, I would certainly say funding some further understanding and design and of this and and then ultimately I think whatever if we it whatever we end up trying to do if it's an if it's a large infrastructure solution, which comes after what Mr.

Hanson was describing.

Um we would need to go after some external resources, some federal resources to do that, I'm sure.

Um the county would be motivated to help with that, I would think.

Yeah, great.

On the transfer station, sorry, I was thinking transit transfer in my mind uh the the transfer station for waste.

Uh that they are doing a lot of engineering on.

There's gonna be some accessory lanes.

I haven't been too involved in that.

Uh but the city of Bozeman is also looking at some preliminary engineering for a portion of the trail from the eastern edge to the MDT facility there.

So about 19th, I think.

I haven't been too involved in that, so I don't have the details.

Um I just know that the city is advancing to they would have more details, so any further questions on this.

Okay, before we move on to discussion, we'll see if there's any public comment um yeah first up we have Jennifer McGarden.

Hello again, and thank you for taking time to hear public comment.

Um, I just want to reiterate, I am not speaking on behalf of WTI or the university.

I'm speaking for myself.

Um, on the on the subject of the valley center spur road um i want to reiterate that a third of us citizens cannot drive an automobile and rely on walking and bicycling in transit um unfortunately with our transit funding and um utd situation at this time transit between Belgrade and Bozeman is quite limited and so many people are needing to walk and bike I have experienced the challenges of needing to travel by bike from four corners to Belgrade and then to the springs down by Costco in Bozeman to deliver some critical medical supplies for my parents and um because I'm an able-bodied adult I was able to go out of my way to ride my bike from Belgrade back up to Valley Center and use that pathway versus traveling down um the frontage road and through this section the spur section but that did add a lot of travel to my path and was very difficult for for me to accomplish I was exhausted by the end of the day um for those people who do not have the ability to drive this is a critical access point between Belgrade the rural community out there in that area as and to Bozeman so I encourage you to not delay this project by study after study after study but implore you to use low-cost temporary safety testing measures such as a temporary crossing to test to see what will work before spending the funding on very expensive um permanent infrastructure and that's my suggestion thank you.

Thank you.

Are we seeing any further comment requests on this?

I'm showing no additional requests.

Okay we'll close public comment and um if there's any further discussion now is the on the Valley Center spur this is the time.

Yeah.

Yeah no I think I I appreciate the the the comments were just made and I think that um what what Mark shared is probably a good solution.

I mean I I understand the necessity of and the urgency of that but I also understand how complicated some of um uh railroad preemption is I've actually done railroad preemption before so understand the complexities of that and what you're talking about because trains don't stop cars cars can and so I think I do think that at least a basic engineering tour of analysis of what it would look like and what the pedestrian movements are there so that it's actually um being done in the right way would make sense there's not like a this isn't like a tactical urbanism type of a solution you can just put out a cone and make a crossing of a location um when you started to look at putting up pedestrian signals and things like that there's actually some more they're not it's not a huge cost but there is some um timing and other things that actually have to happen in order to make it work safely for the pedestrians and the bicyclists and um we certainly don't want to create a situation that didn't exist before um by that but um at the same time I agree that probably a full-blown corridor infrastructure planning study may not be necessary so some way to expedite it would make sense I'll just throw out that um the county has been in circular conversations with MRL and BNSF for way predating my tenure at the county decades probably about some crossing issues um uh that we're now dealing with in the Bozeman Pass area.

And they and MD, or excuse me, all the acronyms.

BNSF um hired some technical consultants to initiate the grant preparation process and design process.

And so we're currently engaged with them.

There's a couple of women out of uh Washington State.

And so I could if this were kind of an actionable thing, and people were ready to move on it or just start even exploring movement.

Um I'd be happy to try and track those individuals down and connect them to Jeff or whomever else and start some conversations and see how motivated they would be to help um just initiate some analysis and design work at this location.

For that any further discussion for members of the board.

Just to say that one more thing about that, which is that our that conversation that I'm referencing is and that crossing is less complicated because there's in a number of ways, and there's specifically no MDT right of way that's um dealt with.

And so that Gino would and his folks would have to be heavily involved with this one, of course.

So that's a another layer that's over my head, but um I'd like to just chime in here and really appreciate Jeff for bringing this um to us.

And it's really exciting to start kind of working on these um really tricky spots that I think an MPO is um, this is what this is what we're here for, is to dig into um these kind of really technical intersections that um have a lot of overlapping jurisdiction.

And um, yeah, it looks like it's it's complicated and we're taking good steps to figure out the best path forward and really appreciate our um our public comment about not um delaying this effort because it's it's clearly a highly utilized spot and um the actions we take now can can save lives in the future.

Yeah.

Any further discussion?

Um I'll just say uh the mayor Belgrade and and myself have been working on what our joint meeting is gonna be discussing, and I'm sure that these the general, you know, trying to find, I mean, I think this is a generational challenge for these two cities as we're as we're growing to figure out a way to allow for different modes of transportation between us.

Um I mean, I think our 2020 growth policy um had somewhere between 10 and 12,000 individuals get in their cars in the city of Bozeman or the city of Belgrade and switch places.

And we know that if we're gonna meaningfully try to delete cars off the road and give people different choices about how to get to work and get get home.

Um this is gonna be one of those.

This is gonna this is probably not gonna be the hardest challenge we have to overcome to get there.

Okay.

Seeing no further discussion, um, we can move on from this item, and all that remains on our agenda is just general discussion.

Um, we had some of that before our uh while we are stalling for time.

Um is there anything else that folks want to share with the public or members of this board?

Okay.

Seeing that, I'm gonna triple check.

Make sure that I am correct on that.

That's the last thing.

Yeah.

Um, okay.

Well, seeing no further business to come before this body, um, we can adjourn.

Thanks, everyone.