The Fowler Avenue Connection Project is a plan to expand Fowler Avenue to Oak and Huffine. In a story earlier this week, we spoke to some residents living near Fowler Avenue about how they felt about the future project. On Wednesday, MTN News heard the city's perspective from Bozeman Director of Transportation and Engineering, Nick Ross.
“Fowler Avenue Connection Project has long been on our transportation master plan going back several decades. It’s a critical north-south connection, multiple transportation network through the west side of Bozeman,” said Ross.
According to Ross, this plan will make transportation for residents of Bozeman a lot easier. It will also benefit the travel times of first responders.
“A major reason why we set up our new fire station off of Davis Lane was because of the future connection on Fowler Avenue,” Ross said.
The project is not expected to start until well into 2024. Public involvement will continue for the foreseeable future. Cost and planning is still being determined this early on in what the city calls the “pre-design” process.
“Right now, preliminary cost estimates in the very, very early design phase of the pre-design report has the option that we're looking at around $17 million. However, there are many opportunities to bring those costs down,” Ross said.
After asking some residents about their concerns for the project earlier this week, Ross says there are a lot of people supporting the city for this project.
“At this point, that’s very much not what we’ve heard, and by the way we’ve had many, many people coming and supporting the project as well. Those folk who appreciate why we're doing it would be quite frustrated if we now reneged on this long-planned improvement,” he said.
The project will be addressed at the city's transportation meeting Wednesday at 6 p.m.
