As of Monday, the four-way stop at Durston Road and Ferguson Avenue is almost gone.
The “road closed” signs have taken up their posts, and crews have already ripped up a huge portion of concrete.
This might all still be here when you start bringing your kids back to school, especially if they go to Meadowlark down the road.
There will be detours.
“Kind of like painting yourself into a corner because there’s not a lot of options,” says Steve Johnson, Bozeman School District deputy superintendent of operations.
Claws, bulldozers and shovels might make concrete look like graham crackers, but to Johnson, this heap and the signs around it look like something else: no way through.
“I think all of these improvements will be wonderful when they are finished but, yeah, getting through it is the painful part,” Johnson says.
And with three schools’ worth of students relying on the route and about a month until school, buses will have to find a new way around it.
“We have over 500 kids attending Meadowlark, for example, which is a lot,” Johnson says.
Johnson adds it’s the closure of both of these spots on the road that have made the school nervous, turning intersections into rubble but for good reason.
He does hope that at least one of these will open up by school time.
“It may impact the time [for school buses],” Johnson says. “We may have to move up the pickup five minutes or ten minutes if it impacts the time of the bus route which is also an inconvenience for folks that think they get on the bus too early already.”
And the spot to pick up your kids at Meadowlark is right between both Cottonwood and Ferguson.
Johnson adds that while it will be blocked, things should get safer in time.
“That four way stop is not really functional,” Johnson says. “It gets backed up pretty good.”
City officials say there is some good news for the near future.
“Buses, from the north, they’ll be able to use Oak and Flander’s Mill,” says Bob Murray, Bozeman City project manager. “That’ll get them to the school and from the west, Durston will be reopened here in a couple of weeks so they’ll be able to get back to the school.”
Johnson says as we get closer to the new school year, a notification will be sent to families that have kids in the three schools around this construction.
That notification will also include updated detours.
