Bozeman's Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) Plan

In alliance with the City of Bozeman's goals to improve transportation system safety throughout the community, we have committed to prioritizing planning and implementing appropriately designed roads, trails, sidewalks, bicycle facilities, and transit networks to help us move around our neighborhoods and promote safe, efficient passage to our destinations.

Whether you are walking, using a car, bike, scooter, wheelchair, or even on horseback, all community members deserve to feel safe when traveling around town. The City of Bozeman is taking action through the Bozeman SAFE Plan to make changes over the next two years and create a safer community for everyone.

The Bozeman SAFE Plan focuses on four key elements, known as the Four P's: Physical, Policy, Policing, and Promotion.

View a more detailed look at how the Four P's will help improve safety in Bozeman.

Plan Timeline

Updates on the Bozeman SAFE Plan

12/1/23 3:15 p.m. - Safety Improvements Continue

We’ve been making significant strides towards wrapping up the Bozeman SAFE Plan (although good work to improve safety continues beyond it)! Our Transportation & Engineering Department recently completed a section of shared-use path along the east side N 19^th between Baxter and Rawhide Ridge. Filling this gap creates a 1.5-mile continuous, safe multimodal connection along the busiest arterial street in the city. This project was designed by city staff and funded through a previous allocation from our City Commission.

The remaining items of the Plan include updating our engineering standards, which is on track to be completed by summer 2024, and updating the Unified Development Code (UDC). The UDC is currently on hold and discussions are anticipated to start in the early part of 2024. Embedding further safety enhancements into these standards and code updates ensures that as our city grows and develops, our infrastructure changes with it and is built to even higher standards. We’re looking forward to completing the Plan, and to the many safety improvements to come.

9/15/23 6:00 p.m. - Progress on Safety

We recently installed our first buffered bike lane on Ferguson Ave! Our Bozeman SAFE plan identified the need to fully separate vulnerable street users from vehicular traffic, and buffered bike lanes are a solution where funding for shared-use paths does not yet exist.

The City’s Department of Transportation and Engineering has also adopted a new policy over the last year in which all street maintenance projects such as our annual mill and overlay program are evaluated for Complete Streets compliance. That means for EVERY maintenance project that occurs, we will review the street design and see if there are any improvements we can make to enhance safety for all users and modes of transportation.

We were able to use our scheduled paving project on Ferguson Ave to reallocate street space in a manner that narrows the vehicle travel lanes, widens bike lanes, and implements a 3’ wide “buffer” between the two. We will be testing several styles of removable flexible posts next spring to further protect this bicycle facility. In addition, we have enhanced crosswalks and added traffic calming at several locations.

By designing these improvements in-house and completing them at the same time as the paving project, this work was done at little additional cost to the taxpayer and will deliver significant safety improvement. Further sections of Ferguson will be improved with a similar treatment as they come due for paving.

8/9/23 10:30 a.m. - Speed Limit Work - COMPLETE!

Staff are pleased to announce that speed limit changes have been approved by City Commission and will now go into effect by early September (and earlier in the case of schools). City Commission approved Ordinance 2142 on August 8, lowering speed limits in locations across the city. Wondering what’s in the ordinance? See below for major details:

• Speed limits on principal arterials were lowered to 35 mph, and speed limits on minor arterials/collectors were lowered to 30 mph. Streets in dense areas of downtown Bozeman and business districts remain at 25 mph. Ferguson Ave between Huffine Ln and Baxter Ln will be prioritized as the first area to receive updated signage.
• We removed the time of day speed limit on school zones and parks. These areas now have the same lowered speed limit regardless of the time of day. These changes will go into effect before class starts for the year.
• State-controlled routes must follow a separate process for speed limit changes that is run through the Montana Department of Transportation and starts with a speed study. Staff are currently conducting speed studies within the city along segments of Oak, Baxter, and Kagy. All speed limit changes on state-controlled routes must be approved by MDT and the State Transportation Commission and are based on the outcomes of the speed study.

Be on the lookout for updated signs and lower your speed accordingly! Thanks for your help in keeping Bozeman safe.

5/25/23 4 p.m. -  Promotion and Physical Update

The City has been busy working behind the scenes on the SAFE plan lately and we’re happy to report some recent strides in the Promotion part of our plan:

• Our Parks & Recreation team recently launched the Walking School Bus program at Hyalite and Meadowlark Elementary. This program gets students moving and gets them safely to school. Groups of students are led by Parks & Rec staff from a central meeting point, and students walk or bike as a group. We’re excited to partner with the schools in safer streets programming and look forward to expanding this program in the future.
• We will soon start a major communications campaign around parking enforcement. We’re using our communications tools to highlight two major safety issues we see in the parking division: parking too close to intersections and parking in bike lanes. Meanwhile, our Parking Enforcement Officers will elevate these issues to the top of their response, resulting in rapid enforcement. The communications blitz combined with the enforcement bump will help change bad parking behavior.
• We’ll use our channels to amplify safety messages around biking, pedestrians, distracted driving, speeding, and winter driving. Be on the lookout for these! We could use your help in spreading the word and sharing campaigns. All it takes is one bad decision to impact a life, so if these messages help to change behavior even for one day, it could save lives.

We also have more updates on the Physical part of the plan, which involves physical changes to our infrastructure. We are:

• Advancing revisions to our speed limit ordinance. Residents can expect to see targeted routes, such as Ferguson Ave, lowered this summer. Thank you for your feedback on speed limits!

• Launching seasonal traffic calming projects in partnership with Western Transportation Institute.These projects help to slow down traffic speeds, enhancing safety for bicyclists and pedestrians. This summer, residents may see the following:

• Curb extensions at Gallagator & Garfield, Gallagator & Church, Church & Bogert Place, and 3^rd & Wagonwheel to increase the amount of space for pedestrians.
• Pedestrian refuge islands at Ravalli St. and Beall & 22nd.  
• 3 traffic circles (Cypress & Olive, Cypress & Babcock, Grand & Alderson).
• 1 Roundabout center island with street art project (15^th & Beall).
• Median Islands at Beall & 23^rd and Beall & 21^st.

We’re also excited to share that we received the Silver Award as a Bicycle Friendly Community from the League of American Bicyclists. We have received the Silver designation since 2012 and are looking to move into the Gold designation.

3/20/23 9 a.m. - Two Opportunities to Engage on Speed Limits

Interested in the steps we’re taking to change speed limits across the city? You can follow along, review what we’ve worked on so far, and provide input during two key meetings:

• March 22 – Transportation Board
• March 28 – Commission Work Session

All meetings are hybrid, with in-person attendance at City Hall, 121 N Rouse Ave, and virtual attendance available by clicking the link provided on the agenda. To view agendas, meeting materials, and even past meeting recordings, visit the Meeting Videos page. If you can’t attend, you can still review materials and submit public comment by visiting the Public Comments page.

Please let us know what you think! We hope to hear from you soon.

1/31/23 9 a.m. - Speed Limit Work Continues

Now that speed limits across the city have been mapped out, the Transportation Advisory Board will take steps towards implementing speed limit reductions. This can be approached in a number of ways – they could identify limits for certain zones, routes, or simply apply a city-wide limit.

The Board is expected to meet on this topic on March 22, 2023. They will look at various approaches before making a recommendation to the City Commission. Changes to speed limits could occur as early as this summer. 

12/2/22 5 p.m. - Transportation & Engineering Update

The Transportation & Engineering division has recently accomplished two major items:

• Speed limits throughout the city have been mapped out. This critical research will help inform one of our Policy components: lowering speed limits to 35 miles per hour and below. Now that we have this information, we will develop a policy supporting safe speed limit setting across the city. We will then identify areas where speed limits can be lowered and will make recommendations to our elected officials.
• We have submitted our five year Capital Improvements Plan (CIP). A large part of this plan maps out projects to improve and maintain roads in the city. We are prioritizing things like shared use paths and standalone bicycle and pedestrian projects, which will result in an increased number of bike/pedestrian projects and increased funding for bike/pedestrian facilities. 

11/22/22 12 p.m. - Bozeman SAFE Promotion Update

The City’s Communications division needs your help with crafting the messages we use for "Promotion." Help get the right message out to our community about why we need to all work together to keep each other safe on our streets and roadways.

The goal for this campaign is to develop and identify messages that the City of Bozeman and local partners can disseminate via social media, advertising, in Safe Routes to Schools Programming, and other channels.

Fill out the "hot topics" survey and share your ideas for key messages online at https://engage.bozeman.net/safe. 

11/16/22 12 p.m. - Progress Being Made on Policing

• Bozeman Police continue to have a presence in school zones with a day shift during the week.
• Crash Investigator is providing crash data to sergeants for specific enforcement.
• Bozeman Police has coordinated with School Resource Officers, resulting in increased traffic enforcement.
• Police installed message boards at critical locations to increase safe driving messages.