Missoula News

alternative transportation in missoula

Missoula Leaders Hope Bicyclists’ Deaths Can Spark Change

By Matthew Frank, 4-27-07

A memorial for Stacie DeWolf.

On Toole Avenue in Missoula, near where the train tracks bisect the street, there’s a stick figure rendered in orange spray paint on the pavement. It marks where Stacie DeWolf died last Thursday night, April 19th. She was biking, presumably going home, when she was struck by a drunken driver, who then fled. Flowers and messages written in chalk now cover the curb and sidewalk, more added everyday.

It’s a poignant scene in bicycle-happy Missoula, and unfortunately a familiar one. In February, Roy J. Smith, 64, was killed at the intersection of Mullan Road and Reserve Street. Last October, 14-year-old Colin Heffernan died from injuries he sustained from being hit near Beckwith and Higgins avenues.

As Missoula’s annual Bike Walk Bus Week rolls by, the news of DeWolf’s death has been a theme among bikers and walkers participating in the week’s festivities, but not a dominant theme, says Bob Giordano, director of the Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation. Perhaps it should be, he says, “because that conversation has to grow.”

The conversation Giordano is referring to is the one centered on how to make Missoula’s ever-busier roadways more bicycle- and pedestrian-safe.

In 2005 in Missoula, the last year on record, there were 36 bicycle-vehicle crashes that resulted in injury, about double the number in Billings and Bozeman. In addition, that year saw 24 recorded pedestrian-vehicle crashes resulting in injuries, second in Montana only to Billings.

Giordano says there are “hundreds if not thousands” of Missoulians who are deterred from biking because they feel the streets aren’t safe. In Giordano’s talks with people about alternative modes of transportation, “It comes up over and over,” he says.

But he doesn’t feel that incidents like DeWolf’s death hinder his efforts and those of other alternative transportation advocates in town; in fact, he says, they can serve to help foster a dialogue about how to make Missoula’s streets safer. “It’s tragic, but I think it will strengthen the movement,” he says.

Echoing Giordano, Chase Jones of Missoula in Motion says, “A positive thing that could spring from these unfortunate incidents, though, could be that they bring the importance of safety, no matter if you are biking, driving, walking, etc., to all of our minds. I hope it reinforces the entire community’s commitment to safety in transportation and promote cooperation amongst all modes.”

Making Missoula safer and more attractive for biking and walking requires two things, Giordano says: the right infrastructure and the right mindset. “You can’t have one without the other.” There needs to be productive dialogue among all road users and, he says, well-designed streets and trails.

Phil Smith, the City of Missoula’s bicycle-pedestrian program manager, has his thumb on the pulse of Missoula’s transportation habits. Overall, despite three cyclists being killed in the last seven months, Missoula’s growing community of bikers and walkers, he says, “just has to be seen as really positive.”

Smith points out that there isn’t one single thing to which you can attribute the recent deaths. “If we could find the cause, we’d go about fixing it,” he says. In DeWolf’s case, he adds, “it’s hard to pinpoint something reasonable (that caused the accident), except that the driver shouldn’t have been driving.”

About five years ago, Smith says, the bicycle-pedestrian office’s data showed that 80 percent of crashes between motorists and pedestrians were the fault of motorists, and it found various studies suggesting that in order to change the habits of motorists it takes a combination of education, law enforcement, facilities, street signs, and repeated messaging, which all has to be sustained for a number of years. Smith says that having focused on these items, he’s now hearing from Missoulians, “It’s pretty nice to have people stop for me in crosswalks.”

“It appears the campaign…is creating some results in driver perceptions,” Smith says. “We’re making some dent in the problem.”

In recent years, Smith has begun similar research on bicycle safety, he says, and the data shows that motorists cause about 50 percent of crashes between motorists and bicyclists. Through anecdotal evidence, Smith says, that number seems to be accurate in Missoula today. This summer, the bicycle-pedestrian office will focus heavily on what bicyclists and motorists can do to avoid such crashes.

Chase Jones looks to simple things like “looking out for each other, obeying the laws and slowing down” to improve safety. “For bikers, lights and helmets are essential to safety. Being seen and looking out for your fellow Missoulian for any mode is imperative.”

In the end, Smith says, “We just really have to keep working on the attitudes of people...especially the people with the heavy machinery.”

“I do hope people will remember (DeWolf’s death), to almost a fervor, to make it safer on the roadways,” Smith says.

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