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Missoula planners outline Reserve Street Safety Action Plan; focus on intersections, crossings and speeds
Summary
Missoula MPO and city staff presented a corridor safety plan for Reserve Street funded by a Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant. The plan identifies crash hotspots, recommends signal and crossing treatments, access management, and speed‑management measures, and will feed future grant applications for construction funding.
City transportation planners presented the Reserve Street Safety Action Plan to the Public Works Committee March 12, outlining crash history, community outreach findings and a menu of near‑term and long‑term safety measures for the corridor.
Charlie Benefie, transportation planner with the Missoula Metropolitan Planning Organization, said the plan is funded through a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All award of nearly $400,000 (just over $300,000 federal) with additional state Department of Transportation support. Benefie said the plan is a planning‑level document that does not include construction funding but will support competitive construction grant applications.
Benefie said the corridor has more than 1,600 crashes, including three fatal crashes and 63 serious‑injury crashes, concentrated between England Boulevard and Mullan Road and near the I‑90 interchange and other intersections. “When thinking about these safety plans, those fatal and serious injury crashes are really the focus,” he said.
Identified near‑term, implementable measures include converting signalized intersections to protected left‑turn phases, removing right‑turn slip lanes or replacing them with right‑turn lanes, adding lead pedestrian intervals, restricting right turns on red at selected locations, adjusting signal timing (the Montana Department of Transportation is conducting a related ITS and timing study), installing pedestrian refuge islands and rectangular rapid‑flashing beacons, and deploying dynamic speed feedback signs and pavement speed markings. Long‑term recommendations include corridor reconstruction, improved separated bike/ped facilities, and trail connections such as a proposed connection under the Broadway bridge to link the Bitterroot Branch Trail to north‑side routes.
Committee members raised location‑specific concerns (Old Highway 93 at Denny, Mountain/Reserve intersection, the Reserve Street bridge over the Clark Fork River) and asked how safety measures would affect traffic flow. Benefie said the plan’s scope is safety‑focused and will evaluate tradeoffs — some safety treatments may reduce speeds or change traffic patterns, but signal timing and design can sometimes preserve or improve corridor efficiency. He also said the city is conducting outreach, including stakeholder meetings, open houses, an online mapping tool and a walking audit with disabled‑community participants.
Staff said they will use the plan and community input to develop corridor design documentation and cost estimates and to pursue appropriate construction funding streams; a final round of engagement is planned for late summer when students return.
