The engineers and consultants making the presentation about future “upgrades” to Highway 160 — through the nine blocks of downtown Pagosa Springs — had a few specific promises to offer on September 25.
Some of the work would include a long-lasting concrete roadway. We would have ADA access points installed at sidewalk corners. Drainage improvements would be made.
And the highway would be striped with one lane, each direction, through the heart of the downtown business section.
This one-lane striping was perhaps the most controversial part of the plan, because you typically ask for two lanes when a highway passes through a downtown streetscape. A two-lane configuration allows traffic to flow more smoothly when cars are making numerous right and left turns at numerous intersections. Downtown Pagosa, for example, has numerous intersections, serving numerous business and residential streets.
But smoothly flowing traffic is not necessarily “slow traffic.” When pedestrians and bicycles are present, traffic engineers begin to think in terms of single lanes and ‘bulb-outs and ‘raised medians,’ and stuff that might slow traffic down.
We’ll talk about the raised medians in a moment.
During tourist season, downtown Pagosa Springs experiences a fair number of pedestrians trying to cross a four-lane highway — at unexpected points along the sidewalk, and at blind corners. That wasn’t much of a problem, 25 years ago when the population was closer to 5,000 people and when Pagosa had not yet become a tourist destination. But over the past decade, the Town and County governments have spent in excess of $20 million promoting tourism and adding recreational amenities throughout the community… and generally promoting Pagosa Springs as “Authentically Refreshing.”
Or maybe as “Refreshingly Authentic?”
And that doesn’t count the millions of dollars in online and magazine marketing done by local real estate companies, rafting companies, restaurants, motels, and resorts.
At any rate, the success of the state and local tourism marketing efforts, over the past couple of decades, have contributed to our traffic problems, and now the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) wondered where we would find the money to address these problems. Maybe Proposition 110?
Downtown Pagosa Springs is not currently noted for its bicycle traffic, but CDOT pretty much has to install bike lanes wherever possible, because federal highway funding usually requires “multi-modal” approaches to any highway upgrade. Two years ago, CDOT re-striped the downtown stretch of Pagosa Springs and added bike lanes to the east couple of blocks, between 1st Street and 4th Street. But the bike lanes suddenly disappear at 4th Street, leaving the poor bicyclist to fend for himself. (Or herself.)
I live downtown and drive the downtown section of Highway 160 on a daily basis. I think I have seen a grand total of two bicyclists using the newly striped bike lanes, over the past two years. (That’s just anecdotal information, of course.) Meanwhile, I’ve seen a lot of kids on bikes riding on the sidewalk, where it’s actually safe to ride. Unless you crash into a pedestrian.
So about those medians. I guess they are meant to “slow traffic.” And to look pretty. And as a “refuge” when jaywalking across the highway.
The numerous engineers and consultants who contributed to the September 25 presentations to the Town and County leaders at noon, and then to the general public later that evening, seemed to be in agreement that medians would be a good idea, installed on two blocks of Highway 160. One median — possibly to include some kind of ‘landscaping’ — would be installed just east of the Lewis Street intersection.
We can imagine the humorous situations that could result, when huge semi trucks try to make that corner, heading west, and suddenly find a new median installed in the middle of the road.
The other median would be installed along the main business block — the 400 block of ‘Main Street.’
As we can see in the middle of the above drawing, this particular raised median would provide a ‘halfway’ refuge for the tourists and local who dare to cross Highway 160 at mid-block. Cars and trucks don’t typically expect to see pedestrians crossing at mid-block locations. We’re used to people crossing at intersections. But as Americans become progressively less accustomed to walking farther than from their car to a front door, we try to provide convenient access to commercial shops in a downtown shopping district. Even if the crosswalks are relatively dangerous.
Currently, the Town provides yellow ‘safety flags’ at this mid-block crossway. A median would probably add more safety.
But there might be a big problem with these particular medians. We’re listening to one of the consultants explain what might happen in, say, ten years — if those medians were indeed added to our downtown stretch in, say, 2020.
“As part of the [concept development] we are evaluating future conditions, as well.
“So our plan is to stripe this as one lane in each direction. Our expectation is that this [configuration] will operate for a while. So we’ve had our traffic engineers study this. Based on a 1.4 percent [annual] growth rate, which is what CDOT uses in this area, our traffic engineers have evaluated a one-lane configuration and determined that it operates acceptably for, like, 10 years from now. That’s assuming that constant growth rate.
“At that point, the plan is to re-stripe it, kind of like it is now.”
That is to say, with two lanes in each direction, through the central core district, except that there would now be a raised median running down the middle of the road. The consultant brought up a new sketch on the display screen.
“So you see, I’ve zoomed in to the 400 block. And you can see, there’s the raised median there, and then two lanes each way. What’s left on the sides is not enough room for parking.”
There was silence in the room, as the consultant paused. Not enough room for parking.
This was déjà vu for some of us, because almost exactly three years ago, CDOT made a similar proposal to eliminate on-street parking along Highway 160, in the core of Pagosa downtown business district. We wrote about that situation in the Daily Post.
That proposal, three years ago, would have eliminated 54 parking spaces from a downtown that is, even today, struggling to stay alive. I assume the new “Ten Year Plan” discussed on September 25 would eliminate a similar number.
Curiously enough, this “plan” seems to have been endorsed by the Town of Pagosa Springs, to judge from the Town logo that appeared at the top of the Powerpoint slides: