It was early morning when a middle school student stepped toward Main Street in East Helena to cross to school. There was no sidewalk, no shoulder, no designated crosswalk. A pickup came through and nearly struck them.
East Helena Public Schools Superintendent Dan Rispens clearly remembers the years-ago incident, and is grateful that a new regional coalition has found funding for a new crosswalk.
East Helena is expecting significant growth in the coming years – subdivisions planned for the area south of Highway 12 could bring thousands of new homes, and with them more families, students and traffic.
A new regional planning organization, Rispens and others say, could provide a useful framework to ensure adequate transportation, infrastructure and safety investments as need shifts and expands.
When the 2020 Census determined the greater Helena area had surpassed 50,000 people, it triggered a federal requirement to create a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). The Greater Helena MPO brings together the Helena and East Helena municipal governments, along with Lewis & Clark County and the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) to coordinate regional transportation planning.
A planning body, not a construction agency, its role is to unite these bodies around a shared vision for improved roads, sidewalks, trails and transit across the region and connect their priorities to federal funding.
“The goal really is, now that we have this increasing number of population, how can these entities work together to plan for growth?” said Ty Weingartner, the MPO’s manager.
East Helena has representation at multiple levels of the organization. Mayor Kelly Harris sits on the Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee, the MPO’s official decision-making body. Public Works Director Kevin Ore, Rispens, and city planning staff member Jeremy Fadness serve on the Transportation Technical Advisory Committee, a group of subject matter experts that inform policy committee decisions.
The centerpiece of the MPO’s current work is its Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP), a multi-decade blueprint that will identify transport projects across the region and establish a framework for prioritizing and funding them. The final plan is expected by September.
As part of developing the plan, the MPO has been holding open houses for residents to review draft plans and flag anything that may have been overlooked. The most recent round of open houses were in February at the Helena Civic Center and West Valley Fire Rescue. The first round was held last October, and included an open house in East Helena. There, residents pointed to sidewalks, speed on neighborhood roads, unsafe crossings and the need for better transit connections to Helena.
The plan also includes a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan (CSAP) focused on reducing fatalities and serious injuries. The draft safety plan identifies two projects within East Helena city limits – intersection improvements at U.S. 12 and Lane Ave. and enhanced traffic controls at U.S. 12 and Fourth Street. Ore pointed out that the Highway 12 corridor through East Helena has four major intersections, only two of which have traffic signals and none of which have pedestrian crossings.
“Everybody recognizes that something has to be done with those,” Ore said. “With the growth that’s going to happen on the south side of Highway 12, those are all issues that are aimed to be addressed.”
That is where the LRTP comes in. “One of the goals of a long range transportation plan is to identify projects over the next 20 or 30 years,” Weingartner said. “This information will then be taken to our governing body, the Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee, and that group will look at and start to prioritize projects.”
Once the LRTP is complete, the MPO will be able to pursue federal funding on behalf of member entities, including Transportation Alternative (TA) grants, which the MPO is able to award directly, though the funds will still flow through MDT.
“Now that we have these things identified, we’ll set our steps moving forward on what projects and funding we can now go after,” Weingartner said.
Those projects won’t happen overnight. But one more immediate piece of work is already in motion. East Helena Public Schools is expecting official notice this month that it has been awarded a TA grant, the first-ever MPO-generated grant, for sidewalks along Lane and Kalispell avenues connecting to East Valley Middle School.
The grant, which Rispens said is valued at roughly $500,000 to $600,000, also includes a crosswalk at Main Street and Lane Avenue that he said has been a safety concern for years. The district hired an engineering firm to write the application and worked through a process that was new for everyone involved.
“It was a little clunky because it was the first time the MPO has ever awarded TA grants,” Rispens said. “We just had to be patient and work through the process.”
Sticky notes left by attendees at the Feb. 24 open house dot a regional map with transportation concerns, including calls for shoulders on Lake Helena Drive and bike lanes on York Road. (Piper Heath/The Monitor)
The project also looks ahead. The sidewalks are intended to eventually tie into any crossing infrastructure built across Highway 12 and the railroad tracks as large housing tracts, such as the Rose Hills development, emerge south of the highway.
All East Helena schools sit north of the highway and the tracks – a significant potential safety hazard. “If I was a parent, there was no way I’d let my kid cross that,” Rispens said, “unless there was some type of a tunnel or an overpass.”
East Helena resident Ryan Fetherston said the concerns are real and daily. He pointed to the intersection near Heritage Foods and Town Pump where he sees kids biking on shoulders with no sidewalks, speeding drivers in neighborhoods where children are trying to get around and a transit system that doesn’t run on a predictable schedule.
“We just keep putting a Band-Aid on a wound that we’re not fixing,” he said.
Weingartner said the MPO is still in its public engagement phase. A virtual open house is available online if residents are interested in learning more, and a transit survey on the site is open through March 20. Another round of in-person open houses is planned for May before the LRTP is finalized in the fall.
“The purpose of the MPO is to be aware of those things,” Rispens said. “The people that are driving the streets every day know where the danger zones are, and that’s what the MPO needs.”
