Speed bumps along the way 

Little Coyote Road residents, BSOA officials push toward solutions to volume and speed from cut-through traffic 

By Jack Reaney ASSOCIATE EDITOR 

Signs along Little Coyote Road in Big Sky are plastered with a candid message.  

“NOT YOUR SHORTCUT. Save Little Coyote!” 

The stickers’ origin is uncertain, but the message aligns with the purpose of the Little Coyote Traffic Safety Group—a grassroots assembly of homeowners taking action against drivers who use Little Coyote Road to skip rush hour traffic on Montana Highway 64 (Lone Mountain Trail), often speeding along the neighborhood street.   

Especially in the past two summers, TIGER grant construction has added seasonal congestion to Highway 64 and motivated drivers to take advantage of Little Coyote Road, which was not designed to handle high volumes of traffic.  

Road work aside, it’s not a new problem.  

Back in 2017, the Big Sky Owners Association funded a solution-oriented traffic study that counted vehicles and tracked their speed. The study revealed that average vehicle speed is between 27 and 31 miles per hour, according to BSOA Executive Director Suzan Scott. The speed limit is 25. 

Representatives of the Little Coyote Traffic Safety Group have communicated often with the BSOA board in an effort to motivate traffic safety projects. 

“We listen to them, we hear them, we take it into consideration… We have been going through our processes to figure out how best to resolve the situation,” Scott told EBS.  

Jan Weber, one of those representatives, says the safety group has more than 130 members, including roughly 73% of all homeowners whose driveways directly access Little Coyote Road. 

“Folks are pretty engaged, and really concerned,” Weber told EBS. She explained this isn’t the first time Little Coyote homeowners have coalesced to influence traffic safety—now they’re focused on pushing the BSOA to construct speed tables. 

Speed tables are like speed bumps but with a flat top suitable for Little Coyote Road’s speed limit. The study ruled out other solutions including roundabouts, road narrowing, stop signs and traffic lights. 

Both BSOA and the safety group agree that speed tables would reduce speed, and potentially deter drivers from taking the route. 

“We will be so happy to have those speed tables in, because they will just create resistance,” Weber said. “If you have to slow down a little bit, three times on the course of your ‘shortcut,’ then you might stop considering it to be a ‘shortcut.’”  

“Our board has worked very hard on this project to make it happen,” Scott said. “A lot of consideration, a lot of deliberation, and I congratulate them on their efforts.” 

Like many infrastructure projects, cost is a primary challenge.  

Funding avenues 

In 2017, BSOA was quoted $4,000 apiece for speed tables, Scott recalled. Two years ago, each would have cost $8,000. More recently, after BSOA’s “extensive out-to-bid efforts,” the best bid was $128,000 for three speed tables—almost $43,000 each. 

“The $128,000 bid was a huge surprise for us… The availability of these road contractors is really what’s driving this [cost increase], I believe, with all the road construction that’s going on,” Scott said. At one point in 2023, BSOA did not receive any bids at all.  

In June 2024, the Big Sky Resort Area District fully funded BSOA’s $47,000 nonprofit grant request to help fund speed tables. Around that time, BSOA Board Chair Clay Lorinsky led the board to implement a 5% special assessment fee—the maximum allowable without requiring a membership vote—for all BSOA members to contribute to the project. The assessment has not yet been enforced or collected, Scott said.  

The 5% assessment will collect roughly $66,000, which leaves a gap of about $15,000. BSOA hopes the safety group will step up to cover the difference.  

“The board has decided that because the Little Coyote residents will most benefit from the speed tables that [BSOA] would like to see contributions from those residents, as well,” Scott said.  

Put simply, BSOA and the safety group disagree on funding; Weber believes that BSOA should have been budgeting capital reserves for speed tables since the study recommended them in 2017.  

In 2024, one key question remains: whether constructing speed tables is considered maintenance of the road, typically funded by a Gallatin County rural improvement district that encompasses Big Sky’s Meadow Village. BSOA Project Manager Emma Lawler said RIDs would not classify the construction of speed tables as “maintenance,” which leaves the question of whether BSOA is responsible—and if not, who is?  

Although speed table funding remains incomplete, BSOA did take action on other low-hanging fruit recommended by the traffic study: driver feedback signs which show an oncoming driver’s speed.  

In 2018, BSOA installed two permanent feedback signs. In 2022 and early 2024, BSOA added two mobile feedback signs, which count the number of cars and record their speed. Data collected from June 2023 and June 2024 appear to show a decline in cut-through traffic volume, Scott explained. BSOA believes last year’s construction-related traffic may have created a high-water mark.  

“You have a couple of spikes… but you’re seeing a significant decline in the number of vehicles from 2024 to 2023. However, that’s not what we’re hearing from our members,” Scott said. “But we have to follow our data, as opposed to what our members are reporting.”  

Other efforts to slow the shortcut 

Speed tables aren’t the safety group’s only recent effort to reduce the volume and speed of cut-through drivers. Weber shared three key successes.  

First, because many short-cutting vehicles are contractor rigs and even large construction vehicles—and much of the construction near Lone Mountain pertains to Moonlight Basin and the One&Only hotel—the group brought traffic data from weekday afternoons to Moonlight Basin VP Kevin Germain, who was “very supportive” in passing the message along to project managers and subcontractors: please do not use Little Coyote Road.  

“And that had a really positive impact,” Weber said. 

Second, the group recently gained county permission and financial support for crosswalks along the road, coupled with 15 mile-per-hour speed zones. The crosswalks will be striped this summer by the Big Sky Community Organization, and located at the Reflector Trail and the Crail Ranch Trail near Big Sky Community Park.  

Big Sky Resort offered to fund the pedestrian speed limit signage. The resort’s Golden Eagle employee housing adds drivers to the road, and in the past, the resort has also asked its employees to use the shorter, more commercial section of Little Coyote Road. 

Finally, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office previously did not issue speeding tickets on Little Coyote, only pulling over drivers for speed warnings. Drivers caught on.  

“We actually spoke with some construction workers who told us, ‘Oh no, we know no tickets are issued on Little Coyote Road,’” Weber said.   

In a meeting, Sheriff Dan Springer agreed to authorize deputies to begin issuing tickets, but warned that homeowners would be ticketed too. Weber said the group is happy to oblige.  

Speeding tickets are now in play. 

Beyond these small victories, there’s one longshot: to cut traffic volume, the safety group is attempting to restrict non-residents from turning left from Highway 64 onto the “upper” Little Coyote entrance when coming from the mountain. 

The group contacted Montana Department of Transportation, and road and bridge officials from Gallatin County. MDT would require an enforcement plan, but road and bridge officials said enforcement wouldn’t be feasible. 

At the May 8 Joint County Commission meeting in Big Sky, Weber asked the Gallatin County Commission for help convening all parties.  

“To be clear, we are not asking to prohibit use of a county road. We are asking to restrict entry via just one of several access points to the road,” Weber told the county commission. 

Commissioner Zach Brown said part of the reason MDT indicated restriction could be possible is because MDT works with 56 Montana counties, all of them nuanced.  

“And a philosophy that has guided Gallatin County as an organization for decades is that we dedicate roads to the public when we go through subdivision process,” Brown said. 

“MDT doesn’t necessarily have a very nuanced view of how Gallatin County operates, versus how the other 55 counties in Montana operate,” he added. “But we certainly have a very clear philosophy as an organization, as local government, that we dedicate roads to the public… That certainly relates to Little Coyote Road, and is related to why we are not accustomed to telling the public to use the road that they own.”  

Weeks later, Weber said the left-turn restriction doesn’t seem likely.  

“But we’re going to follow it through,” she said. 

Beyond restrictions and law enforcement, speed signs and concrete installations, the concerned residents and HOA officials will need education and outreach to keep their neighborhood road safe for bike-riding children, dog walkers and the like.  

The BSOA has a simple ask: use the improved section of Highway 64.  

“Respect our residents who live along Little Coyote Road. For safety reasons, slow down. Be neighborly,” Scott said.   

And Weber’s camp will continue self-enforcing what they believe to be a safe speed, 20 miles per hour—a petition to reduce the speed limit was denied based on Gallatin County statute—with a movement they call “the great 20-mile-per-hour slowdown.”  

Even if it creates some road rage, the slow-driving residents believe it’s a fight worth fighting to keep their neighbors safe.