Pedal Power

Room to Roll: Higgins Avenue Could Have Bike Lanes Soon

By Amy Linn, 5-28-09

	A bicyclist braves Higgins. Photo by Greta Rybus

Missoula cyclists who navigate bustling Higgins Avenue downtown could soon have a reason to celebrate--and more room to spin, cycling advocates say.

Chances are good that bike lanes will be added to a section of Higgins from the bridge to Broadway Street as part of a scheduled repaving project on Higgins this summer. The bike lanes could appear by July and be completed in August, said Ward 3 Councilman Bob Jaffe, who was one of many participants at a recent meeting on the topic arranged by Jim Sayer, executive director of Adventure Cycling Association.

Sayer, who organized the May 26 meeting on behalf of the Bike/Walk Alliance for Missoula, said the goal was to discuss bike lanes with a variety of city officials, business representatives and—perhaps most importantly—with Doug Moeller, the Missoula district administrator for the Montana Department of Transportation.

MDT will soon be repaving not only Higgins, but also Orange Street. Bicycle advocates were hoping bike lanes could be a part of those projects, and won a nearly-green light for the Higgins proposal. The meeting—which included Ward 1 Councilman Jason Wiener and representatives from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and Missoula Downtown Association—was unanimously pro-bike-path, participants said.

“The good news is that everybody is trying to work together,” Sayer said.

Echoing that sentiment, Moeller said the Higgins bike lane proposal is “looking pretty positive.” But he said MDT crews will first have to make sure buses and trucks can safely handle the proposed 10-foot traffic lanes. “I don’t want to create false hope out there,” he said.

“We encourage bikes on our roads,” Moeller noted. “But we also don’t want to narrow things so much that we create conflicts.”

According to Jaffe, the current bike lane proposals for the bridge-to-Broadway section of Higgins involve two 10-foot traffic lanes and: 7.5-foot spaces for parked cars, with 5.5-foot bike lanes; or 8-foot spaces for parked cars and 5-foot bike lanes.

Additional new bike lanes might appear on Orange Street from the Orange Street bridge to Broadway, according to Jaffe. “That’s still being talked about,” he said.

With Higgins, the bicycle future is more certain. The street will eventually have bike lanes from the bridge to the XXX’s at the north end of the street. “That’s a done deal,” Sayer said.

This story has been updated.

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