Bozeman, Montana is moving to fix two infrastructure problems at once along one of its fastest-growing corridors, hiring a contractor to upgrade strained wastewater lines and build a new 10-foot shared-use path along North Frontage Road, the stretch paralleling I-90 that connects downtown to the airport and the rapidly developing northeast side of the city.
The project is a deliberate dig-once strategy: rather than tearing up the corridor twice, the city is bundling underground utility work with above-ground active transportation improvements in a single construction window. The wastewater component addresses capacity constraints that city engineers have flagged for years amid Bozeman's population surge, which has pushed development pressure outward along the I-90 corridor. The pathway component closes a notorious gap in the city's non-motorized network. Currently, cyclists and pedestrians have no safe continuous route along that stretch of frontage road.
Bozeman has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the Mountain West for more than a decade. Gallatin County's population grew roughly 33% between 2010 and 2020, and the pace has not slowed. That growth has repeatedly outrun the city's utility infrastructure, particularly in newer development corridors like the one served by North Frontage Road. As NationGraph has reported, Bozeman is already in the middle of a broader sewer overhaul driven by the same pressures.
The shared-use path reflects a separate but equally persistent planning priority. Bozeman's Transportation Master Plan and its parks and trails plan both call for closing gaps in the city's multimodal network, and the city has made a practice of building 10-foot shared-use paths whenever capital projects open up a right-of-way corridor.
The specific dollar value and project length have not been publicly detailed in available materials. The city has posted the RFP on its procurement portal, where contractor and cost details are expected to become clearer as the selection process moves forward.
