MISSOULA — The loss of a $24 million federal grant to fund improvements to Highway 200 in East Missoula will weigh heavily on the region's new Long Range Transportation Plan, though other efforts will move forward.
The Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee this week unanimously approved the new transportation plan – just one step toward final adoption. The updated is required by federal law every four years.
The plan recommends 71 projects that will cost around $208 million through 2050, in today's dollars. It places 54% of the funding, or $112 million, toward complete streets, $40 million toward active transportation, and $33 million toward roadway extensions.
“If you think about Russell Street being a $130 million project to expand about a mile or so of roadway, and you look at how much the transportation network will end up being fairly congested by 2050, we need to find other ways to accommodate that growth and create a more efficient transportation system” said Arron Wilson, the city's transportation director.
“There isn't the money to build our way out of that. We're not going to fix Reserve Street with roadway capacity expansion. We don't have the money for it,” he added.
Under the current administration and actions by Congress, grant funding for transportation and infrastructure may become more difficult to secure. Passage of the Trump administration's “Big Beautiful Bill” revoked the $24 million grant awarded to the county to address safety concerns along the Highway 200 corridor between East Missoula and Missoula.
The roadway has taken several lives over the past decade.
“We found out that our Highway 200 grant was essentially defunded through a federal rescission,” said Wilson. “That's effectively $24 million in federal funding we've lost now that we were anticipating having in this plan. That's a huge blow to doing the kind of really good transportation improvements to the core infrastructure that's really critical for our region and growth.”
Watch related coverage: $24 million federal grant for safety improvements along Highway 200 gets cut
With funding limited, the Long Range Transportation Plan looks to address congestion and safety in ways that carry less cost than new roads. Among them, it looks to reduce drive-alone commutes by 34% by 2045 while tripling bike, walk and transit commutes by the same year.
The city and county may also have to get more creative regarding transportation funding.
“Part of that is the rapidly changing picture around federal funding,” Wilson said. “We need to have some conversations on what that means for our funding sources.”
While the Highway 200 project is now tabled, the Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee will need to decide whether it should pursue a shared-use path that was associated with the highway project.
“The loss of the money makes all of that a little harder,” said Wilson. “It's part of the conversation we need to have.”
Transportation consultants also expressed disappointment over the revocation of the $24 million highway grant.
Zach Zabel, the transportation plan's project manager, said future planning may have to consider the uncertainty of federal funding.
“Some of the lessons we have learned to improve the plan for you next time would be working to identify where some of these funding sources are coming from,” he said. “Developing grant applications are potentially more challenging.”
