The fabric of America is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives the nation’s infrastructure a D+ grade — that’s the roads and bridges we drive on every day, the airports we use for business and vacation travel, and the schools where we send our children to learn…
— from “America’s infrastructure is crumbling and these people are suffering because of it” by Mallory Simon and Rachel Clarke, posted on the CNN website, June 2019.
A friend told me yesterday that he’s uncertain about “where I’m headed” with this current editorial series: “The Growth Ponzi Scheme.”
I had to admit that I myself have no idea where I’m headed. They call it ‘thinking out loud’. When a person is trying to understand a complex problem, speaking out loud with your voice, often in a conversation with a friend… or writing down your ideas… are ways to escape from the ‘endless loop’ that typically runs inside your head, going over the same territory… again and again.
It’s even better when the friend is giving you feedback… whether you agree with it or not. Feedback helps open up the mental pathways. At least sometimes.
And speaking of pathways… I have to say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the River Walk trail, along the banks of the San Juan River, since moving into downtown Pagosa Springs in 1993. For the first few years, the trail ran from Town Park, under the Hot Springs Boulevard Bridge, to Centennial Park, and then came to an end at South 6th Street. About a half mile of trail; maybe a ten minute walk, one way — or twenty minutes, down and back. Then the Veterans Bridge was added at Town Park, allowing access to Reservoir Hill — another great place for a casual stroll, although a bit more challenging. The next phases added a wide concrete trail all the way from the new pedestrian bridge at South 6th Street.
When the Town government finishes the planned Hermosa Street trail extension, the River Walk trail will run from the First Street Bridge all the way to Yamaguchi Park — about 2 1/2 miles. A nice 45 minute walk, one way. Round trip, maybe an hour and a half.
The odd thing about this trail — as lovely as it may be, and as relaxing as it may be — is that it doesn’t connect people to many significant destinations, other than parks themselves. No one would use this trail, for example, to do grocery shopping. It’s very unlikely you would use this trail to walk to your job, or to walk to school, or to shop for a pair of walking shoes.
It’s basically a multi-million dollar recreational trail, leading from one recreational location to another. It’s a lovely walk for someone with a dog, who doesn’t need to do anything in particular… other than walk their dog.
My house is located near North 5th Street, one of the main arterials for the north downtown neighborhood, and the children in the neighborhood who attend Pagosa Springs Middle School typically walk past my house in the morning and afternoon. They generally walk in the middle of the street, because their are no sidewalks to speak of. Part of the path to school rounds a blind curve in the North 4th Street alley, and I’m slightly amazed that no children have been injured or killed at that blind curve during the 25 years I’ve lived here.
The reason we have a multi-million-dollar recreational trail that’s almost purely recreational, and no sidewalks for children headed to school, has to do with various government policies. For one thing, the Colorado Lottery was designed to generate money for recreation. From their website:
At its core, the Colorado Lottery is a conservation organization. In fact, it’s the only Lottery in the country dedicated to funding the great outdoors. Since 1985, the Colorado Lottery has given more than $3.4 billion back to parks, trails, open spaces and recreation projects across the state. Profits from the sale of Lottery games in the state are distributed to voter-selected beneficiaries who use those funds to preserve and protect Colorado. These beneficiaries and the profits they receive are:
- Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) – 50%
- Conservation Trust Fund (CTF) – 40%
- Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) – 10%
… For the last 36 years, we have been turning Powerball into parks, tickets into trails and games into green space for all Coloradans to enjoy. Every time you play games from the Colorado Lottery, Colorado wins. So, Play On Colorado!
That’s a pretty significant investment. $3.4 billion for parks, trails, open spaces and recreation.
Walking your dog is recreation. Walking to school is not recreation. Walking to work is not recreation. Walking to shopping is not recreation.
Which is part of the reason Pagosa Springs is dysfunctional as a “walking community.” Our elected community leaders, thinking that “free money” is an essential key to effective government, have accepted millions of dollars in grants from the state government over the past 25 years, and we have built out our parks and trails and open spaces and our recreation department. Each of those grants have required the Town government to provide matching funds, which means that the money we could have spent creating safer sidewalks for our school children went into “recreation.”
Another reason why our community is dysfunctional as a “walking and biking” community has to do with Highway 160. Cars and trucks, headed to other destinations, essentially define the character of our core commercial areas.
Although a “bypass” has been discussed for at least the past 30 years, and although it appears once again in the 2019-2020 Town Council Goals & Objectives document, the practical likelihood of building a bypass around the downtown core is… well, remote. Nor have bypasses shown themselves, built in other communities, to be beneficial to the economic livelihood of downtown areas.
There’s yet another reason why downtown Pagosa Springs sees so little pedestrian and bicycle traffic from its residents. Our Town government has, over the past 25 years, adopted a Land Use and Development Code that — intentionally or unintentionally — produces a suburban development pattern. As we have discovered, a suburban development pattern is financially unsustainable unless the community’s population growth rate is rather spectacular. Without spectacular growth, local governments cannot afford to maintain the streets and parks and buildings they’ve built to serve the public’s needs and wants. And as a result, we end up a nation with failing infrastructure.
Is there a solution? Or have we simply screwed ourselves… and our grandchildren?