Where the Ford Mach I Levacar was headed, it didn’t need roads. Shown at the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1959, the single-seat concept car scrapped wheels and touted a top speed of 500 m.p.h.
None of the cars were ever built, much to society’s dismay.
But let’s get back to reality…
The Pagosa Springs Town Council and Archuleta Board of County Commissions met on the evening of February 20 to discuss the following agenda items of mutual interest:
I. TOURISM MARKETING PLAN
II. ACCESS CONTROL PLAN
III. MOUNTAIN EXPRESS TRANSIT OPERATIONS
IV. OTHER ITEMS OF MUTUAL INTEREST
These two boards have been united, over the past three decades, in their devotion to subsidizing one particular local industry: tourism. A recent agreement continues that pattern, by allowing an independent, self-appointed Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board make decisions and recommendations for the use of about $1.2 million annually to subsidize local tourism and tourist-friendly events.
In theory, the Tourism Board is not “self-appointed”… but in practice, the BOCC and Town Council simply approve the Tourism Board membership recommended by the Tourism Board.
At the February 20 joint meeting, Tourism Director Jennie Green gave a lengthy overview of how the tourism staff plans to spend its marketing budget, which is estimated at about $440,000 this year… exceeded in the 2024 budget only by the agency’s salaries and benefits, at $453,000.
Over the past six years, the annual Tourism staff expenses have increased from $235,000 to $453,000. The Marketing budget, meanwhile, has dropped from $450,000 to $440,000.
Those particular comparative numbers were not part of the discussion during the joint Town-County meeting.
The next item on the agenda concerned a possible update to the community’s “Access Control Plan” — basically, a map illustrating, in a ‘conceptual’ manner, how traffic flows will be handled as the community develops and grows. The existing plan was a joint effort by the Town, the County and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), but as Town Community Development director James Dickhoff noted, the existing plan dates back to 2010.
Perhaps it’s time for an update, to be funded, potentially, by the same three agencies? Perhaps we’ve changed the way we think about automobile traffic, and about our community, since 2010. Or maybe not?
Certainly, we have not seen many new subdivisions since 2010, other than a small luxury development on Light Plant Road which will have little significant traffic impacts. A few millionaires who visit for a few weeks of the year? A somewhat larger impact was generated by the 34 new apartments at Rose Mountain Town Homes on Hot Springs Boulevard, but not anywhere near enough impact (IMHO) to justify a new “Access Control Plan”.
Planning departments do love to make plans, however. That’s why they are called “planning departments”. As Mr. Dickhoff explained, CDOT and the Town envision a ‘local roads network’ on both sides of Highway 160 through the business districts, to get local traffic off the highway and to reduce the number of access points — the points where accidents are most likely to occur. The Town has managed to encourage small segments of this theoretical road network since 2010, but what’s been built thus far lacks the continuity of a true local road network.
Town Council member Brooks Lindner, who has been involved recently in the ‘local roads network’ planning discussions with CDOT:
“I’ll just say that I was interesting in this, is this has the potential to have a really big impact on our community in the future. If we have some event, or some development, that really increases our traffic, we’re going to want [a local roads network.]. If you look at other communities in Colorado that live on highways, where it hasn’t been done well, it’s not a pretty picture. So I think this is really important, that we both keep thinking about it, both the County and the Town.”
Creation of a secondary road network will not be an easy task, considering that most of the property adjacent to Highway 160 is privately owned. But maybe we will get there, in 20 or 30 years?
Or… maybe we’ll have flying cars by then.
Flying cars would presumably be much in demand in 2024, if they existed — because CDOT and the Town of Pagosa Springs are planning to spend the next two (or three) years tearing up the main highway through downtown Pagosa Springs, laying new underground pipes and conduits, installing a new concrete surface to replace the current asphalt highway, and redesigning the downtown pedestrian experience with crosswalks, sidewalks, and highway medians.
You can read more about that planned effort in this previous Daily Post editorial series.
It’s been acknowledged that this project may pose challenges to downtown businesses, and the tourists and locals who patronize those businesses.
It could be COVID-19 all over again, but worse.
The engineers who summarized the project at a recent downtown gathering noted that much of the on-street parking currently available both sides of Highway 160 will disappear during the two (or three) years of the project. Certain community activists have advised business owners to research ‘Business Interruption Insurance’. My limited understand of this type of insurance suggests it would not be applicable to a planned government reconstruction project.
In the absence of flying cars, how about a ‘shuttle bus’ to get people into and out of the construction zone?
The Archuleta County government has an existing transit department, which operates the Mountain Express Transit buses and some ‘paratransit’ vehicles, and which is planning a large new transit facility in Harman Park. The department director, Kevin Bruce, was in attendance at the February 20 joint work session, and was able to share his ideas about the likelihood that MET can help mitigate the economic disaster threatening to occur in downtown Pagosa.
It wasn’t exactly what our leadership wanted to hear, I suspect.
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.