Estes Park proposes parking, transit facility as Loop alternative

ESTES PARK — Town officials have asked a federal agency to consider a parking structure and transit facility as a potential alternative to a controversial one-way downtown loop designed to ease summer tourist traffic congestion but whose cost estimate nearly doubled this month.

Because of the mushrooming cost, Mayor Bill Pinkham wrote to federal officials, “the only option is to compromise.”

The letter was sent Aug. 18 to the Central Federal Lands Highway Division, requesting that it consider the structure as part of an ongoing environmental impact study of the proposed Downtown Estes Loop. The structure, which would be located in the area of the post office parking lot, was included as Phase 2 in the town’s 2013 application for Federal Lands Access Program (FLAP) funding. The town qualifies for the funding because it serves as a “double gateway” to Rocky Mountain National Park, with entrances to the park just west of the town on U.S. Highways 34 and 36.

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The town had been considering a plan to turn downtown streets into a one-way loop to ease summer traffic jams, and federal officials had said that option was the only acceptable alternative to receive the FLAP money. The federally funded project also would replace three downtown bridges that were deemed incapable of handling a 100-year flood such as the one that struck the area in September 2013.

The project originally was to be financed with $13 million in FLAP money and $4.2 million from the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Responsible Acceleration of Maintenance and Partnerships (RAMP) program. However, after meeting Aug. 10 with officials from Central Federal Lands, which administers the FLAP program, Estes Park Town Administrator Frank Lancaster learned that the price tag might end up being close to double that original $17.2 million estimate.

The problem, he learned, was a preliminary finding in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) study of the Loop proposal that revealed that the channel of the Big Thompson River below the bridges couldn’t handle that 100-year flood either, and water from such a flood simply would back up over the new bridges. Deepening and widening the channel, plus realigning the roadways to access higher bridges, would bring the total cost close to $34 million, partly because of the extra acquisitions of private property the bridge approaches’ right-of-way would require.

Since that meeting with CDOT and CFL, town officials have been trying to find a solution. Lancaster told the Town Board of Trustees on Aug. 11 that a third option might be possible which wouldn’t involve the hotly debated one-way street plan but also wouldn’t include simply doing nothing. Last week, Lancaster revealed that Pinkham had written CFL – which had advocated the Loop project – to propose the alternative, but would release his idea to the public if he hadn’t heard back by the end of the week.

He hasn’t heard back yet, so the town released his letter on Monday.

Under the Downtown Loop proposal, westbound U.S. 36 traffic, toward the park, would use the highway’s current route – west along Elkhorn Avenue through the downtown core of tourist shops and restaurants, then south and west on Moraine Avenue – but eastbound U.S. 36 would be diverted at the Moraine Avenue curve onto West Riverside Drive, across a new bridge over the Big Thompson at Ivy Street, then north on East Riverside Drive to reconnect with Elkhorn east of the downtown core.

Besides easing tourist-traffic gridlock, Loop proponents had said, federal money would pay for replacement of three of five bridges damaged during the flooding of 2013. If the bridges aren’t replaced, they said, the next federal floodplain designation could be expanded to include much of the downtown area, raising property owners’ insurance rates.

Loop opponents have said the plan would hurt their businesses by steering eastbound traffic away from the shops along Elkhorn and disturbing the peace of homes and rental cottages along Riverside. Some opponents say improving parking options and crosswalks downtown are better solutions.

In his letter to CFL, Pinkham noted that “to say that public interest is high would be an understatement. Throughout the required public process, countless community members have stated that a parking/transit alternative … would be a better alternative to construction of the Downtown Estes Loop as Phase 1. In recent discussions among your staff, CDOT representatives and town staff, it has become apparent that implementation of Phase 2, including a downtown transit center with associated road improvements at the intersection of Crags Drive and Moraine Avenue (U.S. 36), is a reasonable and feasible alternative which fulfills the stated objectives of the project and FLAP — to improve public access to Rocky Mountain National Park. In fact, Phase 2 may better fulfill the stated objective than the Downtown Estes Loop, which would reduce traffic congestion in downtown Estes Park but have no impact on reducing the number of vehicles impacting the roads, parking and other resources in Rocky.”

Because the structure would include a transit center that would allow visitors to leave their vehicles and catch a shuttle into the park, Pinkham wrote, “the Phase 2 option also has a greater impact on the stated FLAP objective to ‘reduce vehicular caused wildlife mortality while maintaining habitat connectivity’ by reducing the number of vehicles entering the park. Phase 1 has no impact on the vehicle count and would not reduce the number of wildlife/vehicle mortality incidents in the park.”

Whether the project will be added to the Downtown Estes Loop’s NEPA study as a possible alternative will be determined by the FLAP program decision committee and CFL’s Highway Division. The town still is waiting for a response to its request.