EDITORIAL: Garbage Trucks, and Garbage Roads, Part Two

Read Part One

Section 1. Title

This Ordinance shall be known as the Cascade Avenue Traffic Regulations.

— from Archuleta County’s “Amended and Restated Ordinance 17-2016”

The Archuleta Board of County Commissioners spent considerable time, back in 2016, discussing the Cascade Avenue problem with County staff and with the residents of the Pagosa Meadows subdivision. The problem had come to the forefront of everyone’s attention, as the result of a proposal by C&J Gravel to open a new gravel pit south of the County landfill on Trujillo Road. This gravel operation, if approved, would have generated considerable truck traffic between Trujillo Road (County Road 500) and US Highway 160.

As we mentioned yesterday in Part One, there are three primary roadways connecting CR 500 and US 160: South 8th Street in downtown Pagosa, Bristlecone Drive through the Colorado Timber Ridge Ranch subdivision, and South Pagosa Boulevard/ Buttress Avenue/ Cascade Avenue through the Meadows subdivision.

Any of these routes would have sent gravel trucks through residential neighborhoods, and the BOCC ultimately rejected the C&J Gravel Pit application, based on the lack of suitable connectivity between CR 500 and US Highway 160. (You can read about that controversy in this Daily Post article.)

But the conversation about Buttress and Cascade Avenue continued, because the unpaved roadway was already undergoing heavy traffic from garbage trucks and various other haulers headed from Pagosa’s core population areas to the County landfill down Trujillo Road. The conversation focused largely on Cascade Avenue, because that particular road easement had been granted to Archuleta County by the Alpine Cascade Ranch, with an agreement that no commercial truck traffic would be allowed to use that road.

Those conversations led to a new County ordinance — No. 17-2016 — that specifically prohibited ‘through traffic’ on Cascade Avenue.  The new law, however, proved difficult to enforce. How does a Sheriff’s deputy quickly determine if a particular garbage truck is ‘local traffic’ or ‘through traffic’?  Not easily.

Further discussions, the following year, led to a modification of Ordinance 17-2016, prohibiting large commercial trucks from using Cascade Avenue based more simply upon ‘weight restrictions.’ The ordinance also set a speed limit on Cascade.

Section 4. Access Restriction.

4.1  Local authorities, with respect to highways under their jurisdiction, may also, by ordinance or resolution, prohibit the operation of trucks or commercial vehicles on designated highways or may impose limitations as to the weight thereof, which prohibitions and limitations shall be designated by appropriate signs placed on such highways.

4.2  Cascade Avenue henceforth shall be restricted with the maximum weight restriction set at 24,000 Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) for Commercial Vehicles.

Section 5. Speed Limits Established.

The speed limited on Cascade Avenue shall have a speed limit of twenty-five (25) miles per hour.

The intention of this ordinance, we might assume, was three-fold. The BOCC wanted to honor the original agreement with Alpine Cascade Ranch. The BOCC wanted to limit the damage to the subdivision’s gravel roads caused by high-speed truck traffic. And the BOCC wanted to limit the amount of air-borne dust caused by high-speed trucks.

The unintended effect, however, was to cause the larger, over-weight trucks to use Bristlecone Drive instead.

Bristlecone Drive runs mainly east and west through the Colorado Timber Ridge Ranch subdivision. A little bit of history. Like many of the subdivisions approved by the Archuleta County government over the past 50 years, the Timber Ridge Ranch subdivision was formerly a working ranch — in this case, a ranch owned by the Gomez family. In 1998, a limited partnership called Colorado Timber Ridge Ranch purchased the Gomez Ranch for $3.5 million, and proceeded to plat dozens of residential lots connected by about a dozen residential gravel roads.

According to the County Assessor’s website, most of the parcels appear to be around 5 acres in size, and maybe half of the parcels appear to have homes on them, as of 2018.

The subdivision welcomes horse owners, and maintains an Equestrian Center. A sign near the subdivision’s west entrance asks drivers to slow to 5 MPH when horses are present.

By 1998, the Archuleta County government had learned a few lessons about the problems created by indiscriminate residential development — especially, the problem of road maintenance. As I understand it, the County agreed to accept the rural Timber Ridge roads on the condition that the subdivision maintain its own roads.

The residents formed a Metro District in 2012 for the purpose of maintaining its roads and parks. The Metro District is funded by a district property tax and by HUTF (Highway User Tax Funds) contributed by Archuleta County.

One of the roads — Bristlecone Drive — serves as the subdivision’s main arterial, and as such, has been paved.

Bristlecone Drive, September 2018.

The asphalt pavement does a couple of things. For one thing, it prevents the air-borne dust and washboarding common to rural gravel roads. And for another, it allows vehicles to travel at higher speeds. Thus, it attracts truck traffic. Like, for example, large garbage trucks headed for the Archuleta County Landfill.

Two more things about asphalt pavement. It’s expensive to apply. And it’s expensive to maintain.

At the September 18 BOCC work session, we heard from the residents from the Meadows subdivision, reminding us about Ordinance 17-2016, as amended. That County law prohibits heavy trucks from using Cascade Avenue to access CR 500.

We also heard from the residents of Timber Ridge Ranch, complaining that the prohibition on Cascade has caused the heavy garbage truck to choose Bristlecone Drive as their route to the landfill. The heavy trucks, we heard, are causing damage to the pavement, and are traveling at high speeds around dangerous curves.

We heard that the Metro District cannot afford to maintain the pavement on Bristlecone if the entire community is going to continue using that road as a major arterial accessing CR 500.

We heard that the Sheriff’s Office is failing to enforce speed limits on Bristlecone Drive.

Those problems — and especially, the potential of damage to the asphalt pavement — caused County Public Works Director Bob Perry to apply his knowledge of engineering and road maintenance to the situation. Mr. Perry’s recommendation, published in a letter, was to close Bristlecone Drive to heavy truck traffic, and thus limit the damage to the expensive, Metro-District-maintained pavement.

But of course, closing Bristlecone to garbage trucks would send the trucks to Cascade, where they are already prohibited. (But where that prohibition might not be efficiently enforced.)

Or else, it would send the trucks downtown, to South 8th Street — a paved street recently reconstructed by the Town government at a cost of $2 million.

Curiously, when I visited Bristlecone Drive yesterday evening, I noticed a sign posted near the western entrance.

“Local Trucks Only.”

I have no idea who posted that sign, nor if the sign has any official authorization.

I was working with a realtor friend of mine eight years ago, studying water supply issues in Archuleta County, and my friend calculated that only about half the platted parcels in our numerous residential subdivisions had been built upon. This implies that, without adding a single new subdivision, the population of Archuleta County could potentially double in the near future.

Which would double the number of garbage trucks, I suppose. Maybe we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.