Running for Bozeman City Commission!

After years of screed-ing here about Bozeman growth, development and politics, I’m excited to announce that I’m finally taking the plunge and stepping up to try to take a more active role in defining Bozeman’s growth trajectory. As of last week, I am officially a candidate for Bozeman City Commission in this November’s election.

There’s a long list of things I hope to accomplish as a member of Bozeman’s City Commission, but two, in particular, that are motivating me to run:

1. I’d like to see Bozeman become the premier biking city in the Rocky Mountain West. The car-based development pattern adopted by many American cities has led to communities millions are condemned to spend a significant portion of their waking hours stuck in traffic congestion. Almost every other day someone in Montana dies while driving. Transportation is now the #1 source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Biking, on the other hand, promotes a healthy and active population and creates a more pleasant, livable city. I want Bozeman to be a city where anyone wanting to ride their bike to work or an event feels safe doing so (which benefits drivers, as well, who encounter less traffic congestion).

2. Bozeman has an extremely scary affordable housing crisis unfolding. It takes roughly twice as much income ($103,000 per year, now) to afford a median-priced home now as it did just seven years ago. If this trend continues, it will hollow the Bozeman community out, from the outside in. I love Bozeman because of the passionate, down-to-earth community of people who live here. A crisis is emerging where young people who are passionate about things in life other than the pursuit of money are no longer able to afford to make a life here. On our current trajectory, Bozeman is on track to become another Boulder: those without a trust fund (or proceeds from selling a home in an expensive coastal city) need not apply.

More broadly, I want to see Bozeman take action on climate change (we have to act locally, especially given the abdication of responsibility at the national level), conserve open space (especially by avoiding sprawl), improve our water quality, become a more diverse and inclusive city, figure out a fairer tax system (our current system of 100% property taxes for all things is extremely regressive), develop better transit, and many more items besides.

If elected, I think I have both the policy-wonk chops and the hard-learned leadership skills necessary to be an effective advocate and decision maker to move Bozeman in this direction.

But to get there, first I have to get elected. I’m excited, nervous, but hopeful. It’s a wide-open field and I believe that I can win.

If you’re interested, check out my campaign website: https://www.eggeforbozeman.com

If you’re excited for me, consider making a campaign donation. Montana has some of the most progressive campaign finance laws in the United States, meaning my ability to get my message out this fall is going to be entirely dependent on attracting a large number of individual donations. Thanks!

Snowmageddon 2019

Just a quick note: February just wrapped up as the snowiest February on record in Bozeman’s history—and it’s still snowing. I want this ALWAYS to be my life.

"Urban touring" through the marshes on the east side of Downtown

If I had a nickel for every car I’ve helped push out of a snow bank in the last three days, I’d be well on the way to buying myself a pint of beer at the Bacchus (which is open again). If I had a nickel for every neighbor helping, I’d be well on my way to buying a round.

I’m heartened and delighted by the community comradery.

For example: ten minutes ago, a two-wheel-drive truck somehow found itself embedded into the snow bank opposite my house. By the time I could pull on a jacket and slip my boots on, I was the fourth person to arrive. We each put a shoulder into the hood of the truck and pushed the truck right out. And, then, before the driver could quite roll her window down and say thank you, the helpers were dispersed—on with our days.

The snow this past week has imposed a lot of challenges and hardships on the community, and I just feel affirmed and a sense of belonging by the many ways I’ve seen the folks here respond. There’s a notable absence of abandoned vehicles, not for lack of getting stuck—but for the swift arrival of others to help push. I so appreciate the way that, even as our streets have become treacherous, they’ve also become more safe thanks to so many courteous drivers, yielding, waving, and driving carefully on our two-way streets that have become one-way streets.

And, delighted by how many big smiles I saw on Peets Hill yesterday, while in the midst of a ski tour from my back door…

Making Bozeman a Better Place to Bike and Walk

An Open Letter to Bozeman City Commission

Re: Making Bozeman a Better Place to Bike and Walk

6 January 2019

Madame Mayor, Mr. Deputy Mayor, and Commissioners:

Bozeman’s Strategic Plan rightly calls for increased participation in active transportation. Active transportation makes our community healthier by improving physical health and air quality and improves the livability of our city by fostering a sense of place and safety and by reducing traffic congestion.

Having a goal is a great start, but if the city truly desires a future in which more Bozeman residents choose to walk or bike, this worthwhile goal must be met with tangible actions.

In this letter, I identify three simple steps that the City of Bozeman can take in 2019 to increase future participation in active transportation. These are:

  1. Enforce Existing Code to Keep Sidewalks Clear for Walking
  2. Fix Bozeman’s Bad Bike Laws
  3. Create a Bozeman Bicycle Plan

The way to increase participation in walking and biking is simple: if you make walking and biking safe and useful, more people will walk and bike.

Keeping Bozeman’s sidewalks clear is an obvious place to start. Clear, open sidewalks invite walking. Sidewalks caked with snow and ice or overgrown by bushes discourage all but the sure-footed and limber.

Bozeman ordinance Chapter 34 Article 6 requires that landowners clear new snow from their sidewalks within twenty-four hours of snowfall. Unfortunately, enforcement of this ordinance (like many of Bozeman’s ordinances) is complaint-driven. Most people who I’m acquainted with here in Bozeman would sooner shovel their neighbor’s walk than report a neighbor to code compliance. A system that relies on “turning each other in” makes code enforcement fodder for petty squabbles between neighbors, not a tool for achieving code compliance. We need, instead, a proactive, impartial, and fair system that helps neighbors comply with city code and ensures that our sidewalks are clear and walkable even when a house sits vacant or an occupant chooses not to shovel.

The snow removal ordinance allows the city to hire private contractors for snow removal and to recover not only the cost of clearing the sidewalks but also administrative costs (and if necessary to collect unpaid snow removal bills through property taxes). It’s a good ordinance; Bozeman’s would-be winter walkers deserve to see it enforced. I suggest that the City Manager make this a priority for the city’s next Public Works director. The city should also consider its own role in clearing sidewalks; e.g. the City of Syracuse recently committed itself to actively clearing 20 miles of priority sidewalks in the winter months.

Sidewalks matter in the summer months, as well. A sidewalk becomes difficult to pass if overgrown with trees and bushes. Here, too, city code (Chapter 16, Article 4) requires property owners to keep their sidewalks clear, but a survey of just a few blocks surrounding City Hall reveals that this ordinance also lacks consistent enforcement and compliance. I’d suggest unifying the nuisance vegetation ordinance with the snow removal ordinance to remove the legal penalties (currently, it’s a misdemeanor to have overgrown bushes) and empower the city to use the same contracting and cost recovery mechanisms as our snow removal ordinance.

Second, Bozeman’s existing bike laws make biking less safe and should be rewritten. Currently, Bozeman Municipal Code Chapter 36 Article 10 forbids any adult from riding a bike on a city sidewalk under any circumstances. This seems like a “solution in search of a problem.” Most cyclists naturally prefer the street, but less confident cyclists may prefer the safety and slower speed of the sidewalk. Even for confident cyclists, most cycling trips begin or end on a sidewalk.

To any who would suggest that there’s a legitimate safety justification for this law, I say: balderdash. More deaths occur annually by people pulling vending machines onto themselves than by cyclists colliding with pedestrians. Meanwhile, two bicyclists are killed every day in America by cars on the street. The difference between being struck by a bicycle at 10 mph versus a car at 25 mph is analogous to the difference between falling from counter-height versus falling from a fourth story window.

The only saving grace for this otherwise unconscionable ordinance is that few people choose compliance over their own safety—but therein lies the point: Bozeman cyclists shouldn’t have to choose between complying with city code or maximizing their safety. Dare I say it, our city’s code should promote the safety and welfare of bicyclists and pedestrians.

If in search of a neat legislative solution: just update the existing code to describe “e-bikes” (electronically assisted bicycles) instead of bicycles. This frees cyclists of this unnecessary and dangerous ordinance, and may create a good ordinance in the process.

Prior to 2009, the MSU-Bozeman campus held a similar ban, prohibiting students from riding their bikes on the main pedestrian mall. In 2009 ASMSU President Shane Colvin led an initiative to eliminate the ban. In the decade since, MSU has seen a significant increase in bicycle use with no apparent downside.

If the city wanted to go a step further and create laws favorable to cyclists, it could consider lobbying the State Legislature to allow cities to adopt “Idaho bike laws,” allowing cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs and red lights as stop signs (many cyclists do this already: codifying this practice into law would improve safety by normalizing expectations).

Finally, the city absolutely must begin to get its bike infrastructure right. The city’s current bicycle infrastructure plan follows its “Complete Streets” policy where cyclists and pedestrians get a slice of every upgraded arterial or collector street. This policy amounts to building bike lanes on the sides of busy roads. Unfortunately, if the goal is to increase participation in bicycling, bike lanes generally don’t work.

The formula for increasing biking in Bozeman is simple: build a useful, low-stress network of year-around bicycle facilities. Bozeman’s current approach could be characterized as building a disjointed collection of winter snow storage facilities that double in summer as high-stress cycling facilities. Low-stress facilities include: mixed-use paths, separated bike lanes, and bicycle boulevards. Our current policy of installing bicycle facilities on arterials and collectors is precisely upside down: low-stress facilities are created by separating bicyclists from traffic—not by funneling cyclists onto the very streets designed to carry maximum traffic.

Toward this end, Bozeman truly needs a bicycle plan. Bozeman’s spending on asphalt for bike lanes is disproportionate to our spending on planning good bike infrastructure. Our current return on investment is quite small. To get good value of its money, Bozeman needs a plan that will lead to a future in which the city provides a useful network of low-stress facilities—preferably starting in 2019.

A facility is “low-stress” if it passes the “12-year-old test.” If an average parent would feel comfortable using a bike facility with their 12-year-old son or daughter, it passes. If not, it fails. The Gallagator passes (when snow-free). The new shared used paths on South 11th Avenue pass. The new bike lanes on Rouse fail dramatically (in fact, these new bike lanes generally fail the “30-year-old intrepid rider” test).

Building this sort of thoughtful infrastructure requires a level of planning and detail that far exceeds what’s written into our Transportation Master Plan (TMP). For example, no existing city document describes how to create a “bicycle boulevard,” or shows intersection treatments with bicycle boxes (currently, most of our bike lanes simply disappear at busy intersections, where they’re needed most!). The network that’s shown in the TMP is a visionary future network, which is a helpful North Star, but lacks the required details about intersection treatments, design specifications, prioritization, and legislation necessary to fulfill its vision.

If Bozeman desired to obtain a “Bicycle Friendly Community” gold designation (which would be a good milestone goal toward the broader goal of fostering active transportation), having a bicycle plan is a necessary precondition. If it does nothing else in 2019, Bozeman should fund and hire professional assistance to create a bicycle plan.

Tackling these three “low hanging fruit” in 2019 would be a great step toward showing that the city is serious about promoting active transportation. At the end of the day, the types of transportation infrastructure we build and maintain determines our mobility choices. We’ve built great sidewalks: now, let’s maintain them. We’ve made some unhelpful laws, but these are easily amended. We have yet to build a network of useful, low-stress cycling facilities, but there’s no time like the present to start. Let’s make progress in 2019 by figuring out how to keep our sidewalks clear, ensuring that our laws support safe bicycling, and beginning to plan and build a useful network of cycling facilities that will appeal to users of all ages and abilities.

Thank you for your consideration,

Mark Egge
542 N Black Avenue
Bozeman, MT 59715

CC: Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee, Bozeman Area Bicycle Advisory Board, GVLT, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, WTI, Downtown Bozeman Partnership

A Brief History of Bozeman

I’ve just delightedly found that Bozeman’s 2009 Community Plan (a.k.a. Growth Plan) contains a brief (10-page) and delightful history of Bozeman, from the first peoples here some 10,000 years ago on up through the present. If you’re curious who arrived first in now-Gallatin Valley—Lewis or Clark—or interested in which year Bozeman established its electric street car system, read on: BozemanGrowthPolicy2009-History

Sure, Go Ahead. Get Lost in Montana

It started innocently enough. A quick five or seven-mile loop through Tom Miner basin just north of Yellowstone National Park; a perfect “taper” run leading to the race on tap next weekend.

With Mipso playing on the Sweet Pea stage till sundown, I ended up with a late start out of Bozeman the night before. Nearing the trailhead, both moose and black bear darted into the shadows, fleeing my headlights piercing the tunnel of dark through the otherwise untrafficed narrow dirt road.

I slept unusually late, not starting my slow jog out of the trailhead until well into the day. I carried a hand bottle, a few gels, a GPS watch. My GPS-equipped smartphone—my typical companion when running in new terrain—remained in the truck on account of my hasty pack job the night before leaving me armband-less.

The slate-colored sky spit a few drops of rain with barely enough substance to be considered drops. I hoped against a downpour, knowing what rain would mean to me in my thin t-shirt and short shorts at an elevation where, even in early August, the snow was only just recently melted out (my previous attempt to run this loop in June was thwarted by feet-thick snow).

Five or so miles in, the first concern registered: the trail didn’t seem to be going the correct way. I should be closing lolly-pop head loop back to the lolly-pop stem leading back to my truck. Enjoying the single-track (sloping gently downhill) and the views, figured I’d run a bit more and see where things led.

It’s funny how the mind will hold out hope, even in the face of mounting evidence against. The trail eventually turned the direction I expected. Even as ten miles ticked by, I help out hope of coming out where I’d started (in fairness, my glance at the map that morning had been cursory—perhaps I had simply misestimated the distance).

At mile fifteen, reality set in, in the form of an unrecognized trailhead parking lot, empty except for a single locked vehicle. The trailhead offered no information except for a faded, region-scale map.

I studied the map as best I could, gleaning the names of nearby creeks, and trying to make sense of what I’d run. With a race the next weekend, I didn’t dare run back the way I’d come (fifteen miles was already well-more than my taper intended—doubling my fifteen miles was right out).

By now, the sun shone warm and brightly. With a clear sense of direction, I set out to short-cut over the ridge to the north of me, straight back toward the trailhead where I started.

Easy running through open meadows turned to slow-moving bushwacking over thickets of downed trees. I opted to drop into a brushy, creek-filled drainage, where I knew a trail existed and where I hoped I could make better time.

The creekside trail, like many Montana trails, turned out to be more concept than physical reality—discernable mostly by the cut ends of logs where the Forest Service had “maintained” the trail some years prior. In the thick brush adjoining the noisy creek, I sang inane songs (oh Tom Miner / he had a basin / trail running / in that basin…) at the top of the lungs, wishing for my bear spray (at home with the armband that would otherwise have carried my smartphone/GPS).

The trail climbed up from the creek a bit. I found blueberries, which I enjoyed with relish, having consumed the last of my calories hours prior. Then raspberries. Wishing for strawberries, as if by divine providence, I found a few pea-sized strawberries, hiding in the brush. Rounding a corner (singing at the top of my lungs), I startled at a great crashing in the woods above me to see a black bear (the largest black bear I’ve ever seen) sprinting up the steep embankment above me and away.

As the afternoon light began to fade the trail climbed out of the ravine and into more open country. My eyes sought the surrounding ridgelines and promontories to make some sense of where I was—to no avail. By now, the sky was again slate-colored. A wind picked up, and suddenly cold pellets of rain were spitting from the sky, and then a proper downpour. I cowered, curled into a ball, under the tall mass of a dead Douglas Fir, trying to keep out of the freezing rain and biting wind.

Pinned as I was, I had time to take stock of my situation:

  • Current time: 6 pm
  • Estimated elevation: 8000 feet
  • Weather: thunderstorm, estimated duration unknown
  • Location: lost
  • Nearest known location: five hours away
  • Hours of daylight remaining: three
  • Surest option to escape the elements: none
  • Plan: wait and hope for storm to blow itself out; continue north, climb to ridgeline; hope for the best

Miraculously, the storm cleared. Late evening rays of sun pieced out below the clouds. Shivering vigorously, I willed my body to hobble faster even while keeping myself wrapped in semi-fetal bear-hug, hoping to drive my calorie-deprived and exhausted body hard enough to warm up as I threaded the gauntlet of sopping brush and vegetation.

Gaining the ridge (still shivering as I ran), what little hope I had sank—ridges and peaks and valleys spread away from me in all directions, none of which offered a hint of familiarity. Hope rose again as I discerned a trail, a fairly substantial trail, bearing the track of a dirtbike that had passed, possibly even that day.

Slowly, I formulated a new plan: follow the trail. Logically, it must lead to civilization, sooner or later.

And so I did. Running as best as my wasted legs and still-bear-hugging-myself-posture would allow, I ambled along the trail, which dropped off the ridge through a basin, then climbed back to the ridge where it clung stubbornly against my will.

About this time, I recall thinking to myself, “under different circumstances, I’d be astonished by the beauty, here.” Indeed, valleys and ridges stretched in every direction, soft-yellow evening light still cutting through the clouds, illuminating a landscape white and shining in its higher reaches with the iridescent sheen of accumulated storm sleet. And there, in the midst of it all, and a sole, nearly naked runner traversing across the skyline, shadow stretching clear to Pennsylvania.

And then, nailed to a gnarled tree clinging to a saddle on the ridgeline: a sign, and the rushing moment of realization of my exact location.

This whole time, my frame of reference put me somehow south of where I started. In fact, under the directionless, sunless sky, I had traveled north at a split in the trail that morning, not south, and had traveled some twenty miles north since. At the moment of realization, with some 45 minutes of daylight remaining, I found myself equidistant between Bozeman, some 25 or 30 miles to the north, and the trailhead to the south where my truck was parked.

Well, shit. At least I knew where I was. Given that it was nearly 9 pm on a Sunday, I figured my odds of finding a ride from Hyalite at 11 pm would be slim, meaning hoofing it through the night back to town, likely until 3 or 4 am, and then waking the next morning with my truck abandoned a two-hour drive away. I’d have to convince someone to spend half a day driving to help me retrieve my abandoned vehicle—what a pain! So, instead, I turned east, hoping to be able to reach the floor of Paradise Valley (some many miles distant) and the road running through, so as to be able to walk through the night on the roads I had driven the night before back to my truck.

No such luck, of course. The “trail” that was supposed to exist leading out along the creek was as much a fiction as the last “trail” I had traveled. Darkness settled.

I didn’t much mind the scratches of the brush, but I dreaded the sopping water on every leaf. As darkness settled, I tripped, slide, and stumbled with increasing frequency. Eventually, I found what little of a trail it was, again only discernable but cut log-ends, but far better (when I could stay on it) than climbing up, down, and over the beetle-kill deadfall.

For a while through the moonless night, I navigated by the dim light of the heart-rate monitor embedded in the back of my watch, turned out towards the woods like a flashlight. I eventually exited the thick woods into more meadow-like terrain. I found and followed a faint two-track, ending abruptly at a gate. Something large moved in the nearby woods. Cows, it turned out, after much yelling and throwing of things into a mute and blank darkness. Lights on a house shone in the far-off distance.

Then the watch chirped a warning—5% battery remaining. Without its feeble light, moving in the pitch-dark became mostly falling, causing me to fear injury. I used the last of the watch battery to gather dry grass under the branches of a tree, burrowed into the mounded grass as best I could and settled in to wait for sunrise.

I slept some, fitfully. I would wake, shiver violently for a spell, then drift back to sleep. (In the morning when I awoke, my pecs were oddly sore from their involvement in my shivering.)

I awoke in the predawn light. Further down the valley below me, something moved—headlights, passing on a road a mere quarter mile from where I had stopped, unable to make further progress.

A long story short, with some help from strangers, I found my way back to the unknown trailhead I had emerged at, the afternoon before, and from there the fifteen miles back to my truck. I stopped to nap in the sun along the way—once, then twice. I gathered thin thimblefuls of berries when I found them and drank greedily from the cold mountain streams. I lost the trail at one point, but this time spent an hour back-tracking to find it rather than forging another “shortcut” to god-knows-where.

At 3 pm, after 28 hours out, I rounded the last bend in the road to the trailhead, in sight of my vehicle—a site for sore eyes, if there I’ve known one. After gorging myself on what calories I had left in the truck, I started the engine and pointed toward home—chastened, relieved, exhaused—and now knowing what it means, truly, to be lost.