Montana's streets are among the safest in the nation for pedestrians, a report out Monday shows, yet serious safety challenges remain for people who walk or bike on Montana roads.

The average U.S. road has a "pedestrian danger index" of 52.1, according to a report released Monday by Transportation for America, a national group urging "complete streets," or byways built with all users in mind, including pedestrians and bicyclists. Montana scored an impressive 24.5, near the top of the safety pack along with larger cities like Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The lower the score, the safer the city.

The index was calculated by dividing the pedestrian death rate between 2007 and 2008 with the percentage of people who regularly walk to work. In Montana, 26 pedestrians were killed when walking in that time.

Transportation for America is a coalition of national groups, including alternative transportation and conservation groups, the AARP, the National Association of Realtors and many other local organizations.

Just three Montana metro areas - Billings, Missoula and Great Falls - were large enough to be considered for the national report, and Montana's statistics were not included on the top 52 most dangerous large metro areas for walkers.

Yet Montana's rate is better than that of New York City, which scored a 28.1 on the walker safety index.

Derek Goldman, of Transportation for America, said Montana scored high in part because of its population: The most dangerous places for pedestrians in America are large, sprawling cities that grew very quickly after World War II, when the car was king in American urban design.

"These newer cities were the antithesis (of older cities)," he said. "They were designed almost to terrify anyone with the temerity to go for a walk."

The safest large U.S. cities are mostly northern cities that were already big before the automobile changed American life. While Montana obviously saw enormous growth after World War II, it was almost nothing compared sprawling growth of say, Orlando, the most dangerous large city for pedestrians, according to the report.

Goldman also said those cities are a warning signal for Montana cities: It's not too late, he said. In the future, you can make your cities much safer - and healthier - by yielding at least a little right of way to pedestrians when building and repairing roads.

In Montana, Missoula scored the best, with a rating just above 17. And, according to the report, that may be no accident. Missoula spent twice as much money per capita on bike and pedestrian concerns than Billings, the only other Montana city that received a score. Missoula spent more than $10 per person on bike and pedestrian projects; Billings spent just over $5 per person.

(Great Falls didn't see any pedestrian deaths in 2007 and 2008 and did not receive a pedestrian safety index score.)

Those figures include only federal money, said Phil Smith, the Missoula bike-pedestrian program director for the city of Missoula. The city also has a policy of including bike and pedestrian concerns whenever it does any kind of major road work.

Missoula spent some of its federal money to reduce the number of lanes in a major street. The city removed a lane on West Broadway, converting the extra space to bike lanes.

Billings, Montana's largest city, has stepped up its concern for pedestrians, said Darlene Tussing, who works on a contract basis as the city's alternative modes transportation coordinator. New roads, like a major rebuild of Shiloh Road on the West End, includes a bike path on one side of the road and a sidewalk on the other. Billings also has in-vested heavily in trails and has changed its city regulations to require boulevard-style sidewalks in all new subdivisions.

But Billings, like many Montana and U.S. cities, saw decades when sidewalks were not required in new neighborhoods and arterial byways like Grand Avenue galloped away from a walking-oriented older downtown area with little thought for people on foot.

Tussing said she's biked down Grand and "wouldn't recommend it to the average biker."

Billings also has miles and miles of "street sidewalks," Tussing said, where the sidewalk abuts directly with the street. Those sidewalks become the resting place for snow plowed out of roads and also leave no room between a person and a car.

"I've taken pictures of some of those," Tussing said. "There's no way anyone could walk on them."

Money is a big part of the problem. Homeowners pay for sidewalks, not the federal government.

Tussing said she's particularly excited about the city's evolving network of trails, like the new Big Ditch trail that heads out of town. She hopes to have such trails networking throughout the city, removing pedestrians and cyclists entirely from the threat of cars.

The Billings Chamber of Commerce has identified such urban trails as one of its priorities, she said.

Michael Vlases, a doctor at the Bozeman Deaconess Diabetes Center, said bringing walking back into daily urban life is not just about aesthetics. It's a matter of public health. When walking isn't safe, people don't do it, he said.

"I tell my (diabetic) patients, you need to walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week," he said. Many respond that there's no safe place for them to walk outside their doors.

Two-thirds of Americans are now overweight or obese, the report said. And while Montanans may think of themselves as "outdoorsy" and "healthy," Vlases said our rates of obesity and diabetes are right in line with national statistics.

He sees a direct tie between obesity, diabetes and an urban and suburban experience where walking is dangerous.

"I don't see how it could be otherwise," he said.

Contact Jennifer McKee at jennifer.mckee@lee.net or at (406) 447-4069.