Ed Kemmick
The pedestrian bridge would begin near here, though on the other side of Minnesota Avenue, at South 25th Street.
It was amazing to watch the Billings City Council come within a whisker last night of undoing 13 years’ worth of work on a pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks.
Mike Ferguson does a good job of explaining what happened in his Gazette story this morning. But for the benefit of people — particularly people sitting on the City Council — who don’t know some of the history behind this project, bear with me.
Ward 1 Councilman Brent Cromley led the charge against the bridge last night, and he and the other Ward 1 Councilman, Mike Yakawich, ended up voting against it. Their ward takes in the South Side, which would benefit most from the bridge.
Their objections were that bridge is not in the optimal location; it costs too much; it doesn’t really save pedestrians much time; and damn few people cross the tracks on foot or by bicycle anyway. The most amazing claim, as reported by Ferguson, was this one:
“Cromley said he spent 30 minutes each day for three days last week counting pedestrians and cyclists trying to get across the tracks ‘and didn’t see any.'”
I’m certain Cromley meant well, but these freelance attempts at “research” by council members almost always end badly. His time would have been better spent talking to some of the many people who have been working on this project for 13 years. Did I mention this project has been in the works for 13 years?
I happen to live on Minnesota Avenue three blocks from the proposed bridge. In the eight months I’ve been here, there have been dozens of occasions when I have been walking or bicycling and had to wait for a train (and many more when I was driving, since I drive too much). And in that time I have seen hundreds of other bicyclists, pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, moms and dads pushing strollers, etc., making the same wait.
I suppose my anecdotal evidence is about as trustworthy as Cromley’s, but the point is that an important vote on a million-dollar project should not be predicated on a few personal observations.
Yakawich, meanwhile, said it’s only a 10-minute walk from 25th Street, where the bridge will be installed, to the 21st Street underpass, and that most trains pass within five or six minutes. So the bridge would hardly save any time, he said.
Here’s where I wish our councilpersons had talked to some of the people who have working on this for years, rather than waiting until the last minute and firing questions at city-county planner Wyeth Friday. He’s a good planner, but he hasn’t been involved in this project for very long.
If Cromley and Yakawich had asked someone who knew, they would have learned that the pedestrian bridge is not just a means of getting people over the tracks in a hurry. It is part of the much larger trails system in Billings, a system that comes down to a number of pinch points where it is crucial to create easy access.
Some of these pinch points have been dealt with. There are tunnels under Main Street in the Heights, Airport Road near Alkali Creek, Mary Street above Two Moon Park and Shiloh Road at Colton Boulevard. There are trails under the railroad and highway bridges near Coulson Park and a trail up the Rims behind MetraPark.
What we don’t have, yet, is a bridge over the tracks in downtown Billings. Cromley objected to having a bridge at 25th Street, saying 30th would serve more people. That may be true, and as I pointed out in my story, the plan originally called for bridges at both locations. But money was limited and putting a bridge at 30th, which dead ends at the tracks south of Montana Avenue, would have required a much longer bridge over the railroad yard, not to mention a lot more legal hassling with Montana Rail Link.
And while 30th might be better for most pedestrians, the bridge at 25th Street makes more sense, again, in light of long-term trail plans. South 25th Street is striped for bicycles, and though those lanes end near the women’s prison, city workers have been trying for years — there’s that history again — to obtain easements that would allow that bike path to go from South 25th under the interstate near the Corette plant and hook up with the trail to Coulson Park.
That connection is probably the one that is most needed in the whole trail system as currently conceived. The system is now a patchwork of discrete segments interrupted by stretches where a bicyclist or pedestrian has to compete with traffic, take a shortcut (and possibly trespass), or, more to the point, wait for a train, sometimes a very long train.
That leaves the question of cost. Yes, $1 million is a lot of money, but this is a bridge over a busy set of railroad tracks, and it includes cable cars to get people with disabilities up and over the tracks. In another story this morning, Tom Lutey points out that the Montana Department of Transportation estimated in 2003 that a vehicle crossing at North 27th Street would cost $20 million to $25 million. By now, you could probably add $5 million to the cost.
So the cost of the pedestrian bridge does not sound wildly out of line. In any case, the money for the bridge, assembled over 13 years of lobbying, planning and begging, is in place. To have pulled the plug now, based on a few vague impressions and some questionable research, would have been incredibly shortsighted, even by City Council standards.
