Planning Board recommends approval of updated Transportation Plan

The Whitefish Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend amending the city’s Growth Policy by adopting the 2022 Whitefish Transportation Plan update. Whitefish City Council will address the draft plan next month to consider its final adoption.

The Transportation Plan serves as an update to the 2010 Whitefish Transportation Plan. It considers all modes of transportation including driving, walking, bicycling and transit to create a consolidated vision for the future. It has a 20-year planning horizon and evaluates growth to the year 2040.

According to the draft plan, growth within the study area has been considerable since the last transportation plan was adopted in 2010 and future growth is expected. The Whitefish Transportation Plan establishes a set of recommended goals, initiatives and projects to address projected needs facing the City of Whitefish to the year 2040.

“The three main categories in the Transportation Plan are the vision, the goals and the strategies,” Public Works Director Craig Workman said.

According to the city, the vision stated in the plan stresses Whitefish’s livability and the value it places on stewardship of the natural environment. It says, in part, that the city will support a multimodal transportation policy and work that preserves the natural resources, promotes walkability and accommodates future growth.

Seven goals and strategies are highlighted and described in the plan. They include improving public and environmental health, advancing efficiency and reliability, and creating livable neighborhoods. The plan aims to preserve and manage major transportation corridors to meet a variety of transportation demands now and in the future.

The draft plan says that an analysis was conducted for two of the community’s key corridors: U.S. Highway 93 (Montana 40 junction to 13th Street) and Wisconsin Avenue (Edgewood Place to Big Mountain Road). The goal of the analysis was to explore opportunities to improve safety, level of service, connectivity and access along the corridors and adjacent roadways.

According to the draft, the existing traffic volumes along Highway 93 already exceed the threshold set in the Highway 93 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for requiring medians. It states that an urgent need is the extension of Baker Avenue to the south. The transportation plan includes conceptual plans for medians and intersection signalization along Highway 93.

Due to the nature of the Wisconsin Avenue corridor, there is the potential for significant right-of-way and utility coordination needs associated with the recommended improvements. Drawings of the corridor plans are in the draft and available online.

“(The Transportation Plan) describes the existing systems, including traffic volumes, traffic signals, crash analysis and non-motorized transportation projects,” said Whitefish Housing Coordinator Marissa Getts in her staff report. “The plan prioritizes goals and objectives to improve transportation into the future and provides a practical set of policies and tasks to achieve those objectives.”

The list of recommended major street network (MSN) improvements includes the extension of Whitefish Avenue to Shiloh/Lenna Joy Drive, the Baker Avenue extension and the reconstruction of Kalispell Avenue. Numerous projects are listed in the plan which can be seen online.

As part of the public engagement process for the transportation plan, three listening sessions took place in 2020 that provided education and gathered input.

“We did a social media campaign, primarily through Facebook,” Workman said. “We did key stakeholder outreach involving the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, Heart of Whitefish and many business owners.”

The last public open house was in June and with the recommendation of the planning board, the draft will go to council next month for final adoption.

“We’ve $185 million worth of work and we only get about $60 million in the next 20 years to do these projects,” Workman said during the meeting.

He added there may be more money, about $10 million, available from expected resort tax funds but that still leaves a gap.

“Karin (Hilding, Senior Project Engineer) and I have been spending quite a bit of time over the last few months looking at some of the large federal grants that are available… and we will be applying for some of those,” Workman said.

Several members of the planning board thanked the staff for their work on this document and voted to recommend approval of the Whitefish Transportation Plan update. The plan is scheduled to be discussed at the city council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 6.

For more information about the Transportation Plan update and to view it online, visit http://whitefish.transportationplan.net.