The Transportation Board of Bozeman met on September 23, 2026, to discuss two major agenda items: the draft Northwest Bozeman Area Plan (a 3,000-acre planning area) and a work session on shared-use path and electric bike transportation policy. Board members provided feedback on transportation network design, wetland avoidance, and active transportation connections. No formal votes were taken; both items are being refined for future public comment and adoption.
But again, a wetland is not a future land use, so you're gonna end up with a very I'm speaking out of my generational lane here, but I I see these the squares and I just think it's you're gonna see the Minecraft version. Um and so again, we're up at 50,000 feet painting with a a a roller brush, not you know, a fine tip pencil. I hope that provides some clarification for your your question and your your comments, I mean. It does, yeah. Thank you, Chris. You bet. Yeah, I just had one question. Uh as it pertains to the future land uses map, um, I guess that this is uh like 50,000 feet uh overview, but and it's like the old plan, but can you explain to me like the logic uh between arranging the community commercial mixed use and the residential mixed use in a square in that structure? Right. I was just curious. Yeah. No, and again, um if if Tom wants to to add some additional explanation, but I'll yeah, I'll give it my best shot. I mean, let's just go back to here and I'll just literally make something up. But if you have, let's say, a major intersection like at Baxter Lane and Cottonwood, right? Which I know in this case is partly in the city and partly out of the city. From a planning perspective at this level, centered on that major intersection, you might show that that pink color, um, the community commercial mixed use. It allows essentially what that is, those zoning designations that are that are um enabling within that future land use would probably have a majority of commercial uses, but maybe have some secondary uses as residential. So you could have a building with you know some retail and restaurant on the ground floor, second floor perhaps of say some office buildings, and maybe there's a third floor um with some apartments. So you're gonna put those probably ground zero, let's call it at that that major intersection, and then you're you're basically layering outward with less dense, less intense uses that then start to shift that mixed use to being primarily residential with maybe some complementary commercial. That's gonna be your orange, and then you move outward from that, and now you're back into the urban neighborhood future land use where you're gonna have RA, you know, R R C R B, RA. Um so you're you're essentially looking for that transition um away from your major transportation and utility corridors from higher density, more mixed use and commercial all the way outward to where you're getting into your lower intensity residential single family detached homes. Is that answer your question, Chris? Yeah, having that representation of that buffer concept. It's helpful. Thank you. Um yeah, I guess I had some questions on the overall uh mileage of road and trails proposed, like what that all adds up to. Great question that I do not have an answer for um Hayden. I think trying to even think if we I'm sure in GIS um you could query and add up those those lengths. I'm not sure we even presented it as such in in the Pratt plan. Um I don't think pro I mean that's uh a kind of detail probably certainly from the street network that'll come from the TMP update. Um but no, it's a good question. I'll actually look back at the Pratt plan and see if we and if we did it it very well could have been for the entire plan. And of course this is only a subset of of the geography. But certainly if you think about just that those some of those distances north to south across this plan, I mean you look at and Tom again, correct me, and or Taylor. Um I will just say that like this square from these um Harper Puckett and these proposed collectors is a quarter section. And so what's that length on each side? Is that a half mile? Even though it's a quarter section, it's a half mile. So if you kind of use that to scale, I mean you're you're looking at it probably five miles north to south. Um and probably three to four miles east to west across this planning area, just to give you a sense of scale. Yeah. Which again, looking at 3,000 acres, I know it's it is hard to get get a good sense of what are we talking about here in terms of distances. Yeah, I know. I appreciate that clarification. Um then it sounds like since the infrastructure would be incremental, um, you mentioned like not doing Gooch Hill until uh obviously the annexation process had marched west enough to like uh necessitate the. I guess Taylor, this might also be a question that you could answer. Um, but like kind of what that graduation trigger is, like is would it would Gooch Hill or like I guess like Ferguson? Like I'm just kind of curious, like would it require the full annexation of the property all the way up from let's take a look at like Ferguson up to Harper Bucket that bends. Yep. Um should that property agree to be annexed, but not that much would be developed.