The Busiest Road In Montana: It’s Shockingly Short

The Montana Department of Transportation shared a post on social media today, highlighting statistics from the agency's 2023 Fact Book. They noted that Montana has 73,670 miles of public roads, as well as some other interesting stats, including the busiest road in the state.

Before I tell you... Would you care to guess which road/highway/street is the busiest in Montana? Perhaps these come to mind:

• US Hwy 191 from Belgrade to Big Sky/West Yellowstone
• Main Street in Billings Heights
• US Hwy 312
• Reserve Street in Missoula
• 10th Ave in Great Falls
• Portions of US Hwy 87
• I-90

Read More: Trying MT Cup Taproom - Billings' New Pizza Hotspot

The busiest road in Montana is barely a mile long.

You would be wrong. All of those roads certainly have a lot of traffic. But the busiest road in the entire state is also one of the shortest. According to the latest available data, the busiest road in all of Montana is.... Mullowny Lane in Billings. 

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Mullowny Lane (it's not even a through street!) is maybe, MAYBE one mile long. Most of Mullowny runs from I-90 south, where it essentially dead-ends at a mobile home court on the bank of the Yellowstone River.

Mullowny Lane sees a staggering annual average of daily traffic of 47,960 vehicles per day! "AADT" in State acronym lingo. Dang. That's a lot of cars; over 17.5 million vehicles pass through Mullowny Lane per year, if my math is mathing.

Two large, high-density subdivisions are surely the reason Mullowny Lane is the busiest road in Montana. Josephine Crossing and its sister development, Annafeld, are home to thousands of residents, and Mullowny is basically the main road in and out.

With nearly 50,000 vehicles passing by each day, I'm kind of shocked that there isn't more retail development on Mullowny. Perhaps the zoning is a little wonky or something, because if this short little road (ahem, lane) is the busiest street in Montana, surely it would be a prime spot for an In-N-Out Burger... or if we're doing true-to-Billings style, another car wash, bank, casino, or coffee shop?