MISSOULA — A Missoula neighbor turned her frustration with unsafe streets into an idea. Soon, that idea will turn into a reality — as a new shared-use path comes to Franklin to the Fort.
In the years Kate Wilburn has lived in the neigborhood, she has seen countless traffic accidents and near misses. For Wilburn, these literally hit close to home.
“I take my life in hand every time I cycle across the city,” Wilburn said. “People get killed in our city regularly on our streets, from drivers who aren’t paying attention and from roads where there’s not safe transportation options for humans.”
Wilburn mainly gets around town on foot or by bike and is constantly worried about safety in her neighborhood.
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Like many neighborhoods around Missoula, Franklin to the Fort has many blocks with incomplete, damaged or, even, no sidewalks.
“We’re missing, I think, 60% or something like that of our sidewalks. I’m standing on a sidewalk right now, but it’s only right here in this block,” she said. “And, safe sidewalks is a question, but sidewalks don’t even serve people on bikes, in wheelchairs or with strollers.”
Without sidewalks, people end up using the street to get around — right next to the cars.
Concerns over safety prompted Common Good Missoula, a local organization of organizations, to get involved.
“We held listening sessions a few years ago and talked to over 300 people and we asked them what they loved about their neighborhood,” said Common Good Missoula chief executive officer, Lisa Davey. “We heard over and over again stories that really shocked us. Literally, one mom said she was pushing her baby in a carriage and a car hit the carriage and the baby rolled out. She loved that her neighbors came out to help her.”
With the feedback in mind, a team started diving deep into Missoula’s transportation plans and alternate options. That's when Wilburn — a member of the team and an engineer — had a late-night idea.
“Three a.m. one morning, this idea came to my mind, rooted in that research, but also rooted in my lived experience of years of living on these streets and traveling on these streets,” Wilburn said.
She sketched out a design she calls Neighborways which takes one side of a street and turns it into a shared-use path.
“It creates an 8 to 10-foot wide path that is for multi-modal transport, which is just a fancy way of saying walking, biking, wheelchairs, hoverboards, scooters, anything like that,” Davey said. “You can think of it like a trail through town.”
Davey said Wilburn’s design combined all of their goals into one solution.
She said it helps solve problems neighbors were sharing, like wanting well-lit paths at night, a space to walk away from traffic and a smooth surface to walk on.
Neighborways is designed to sit on existing street pavement, but set off from the traffic.
“It's already land that we collectively care for and decide what to do with as a community,” Davey said. “There's protective barriers between traffic and whoever is on the path. That was really important to people to feel safe.”
Team member Peggy Schmidt, with Missoula Public Health, told MTN that the design is more accessible for many than sidewalks, which often have cracks or steep curbs, and offers opportunities to be more physically active.
“It's a grassroots effort to address street safety and connectivity," Schmidt said. "It’s something we really need in Missoula because the sidewalks are still spotty in some neighborhoods, and these would be a lot cheaper and easier to build. The city says that it will take about 100 years to get our sidewalk system completely complete.”
The City of Missoula has been looking into other options due to the high prices for materials and lots of missing sidewalks.
Back in 2023, the Neighborways team took the idea to the city. Former Mayor Jordan Hess approved a pilot to see how the idea would work on the ground. The City also committed to keeping the path swept, plowed and ice-free in the winter.
“As the City's looking at sidewalk alternatives, this is such a clear answer,” Davey said. “The City has told us that each route takes about a half a day of crew labor with a couple of street crew folks and that the engineering for each route maybe takes 20 to 40 hours.”
This spring, the pilot is set become a reality coming to Curtis and Schilling in Franklin to the Fort.
The Neighborways team is getting ready. On a walk-through of the route, Davey said there were many spots without sidewalks or where light posts, trees and mailboxes obstructed the path.
Common Good is applying for grants to help fund lights, paint and planters to improve the design and safety.
“We expect it will be a fun community building event when we get it going,” she said. “I would say overwhelmingly people get really excited about this idea. Folks are just really not comfortable walking in the middle of the road.”
Other neighborhoods have expressed interest as well and the team hopes to eventually create a network of five paths across the city, feeding into Missoula’s existing trail system.
“With this project of Neighborways, I’ve been saying for two years, a good slogan is ‘If we build it, they will come,’” Wilburn said. “If there are safe streets, then we'll see an incredible number of people saying, ‘Yes, I want to drive less.’”
Wilburn believes this would not only create connectivity between neighborhoods, but between neighbors.
“People don't get to know each other if they're driving past at 25 or 35 or 45 mph in their private vehicles,” Wilburn said. “People get to know each other when they're out on the streets, moving slowly, and they get to say, ‘Well, hi. Look at your dog'."
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify where neighborways are designed to be placed on the roadway.
