Feds reject Estes Park’s parking-structure compromise

ESTES PARK — The federal government has turned down Estes Park’s compromise proposal to consider funding a parking structure and transit facility as a potential alternative to a controversial one-way downtown loop that was proposed to ease summer tourist traffic congestion but whose cost estimate nearly doubled last summer.

In a letter to Estes Park Mayor Bill Pinkham on Thursday — in response to a letter the mayor wrote nearly two months ago — the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Central Federal Lands Highway Division admitted that the parking alternative “does provide some congestion relief, but in comparison to the one-way couplet, it does not result in significant reductions in traffic congestion or improve safety and access to Rocky Mountain National Park

“Therefore,” wrote Michael Davies, director of the division’s Office of Project Delivery, “this alternative is not reasonable as an alternative” to the Loop.

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Federal officials had said the Loop — hotly opposed by many business owners in the tourism-dependent downtown core — was the only acceptable alternative to receive Federal Lands Access Project money. 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.

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 tried to find a solution. Lancaster and Pinkham said construction of the parking structure and transit center, located east of Moraine Avenue near the post office, might be a good compromise if FLAP funds would cover it, and Pinkham wrote CFL on Aug. 18, requesting that it consider the structure as part of an ongoing environmental impact study of the proposed downtown loop.

Town officials got an early indication that their plan would be rejected when they obtained a copy of a letter sent Aug. 25 from CFL project manager Tony Galardi in Lakewood to Johnny Olson, CDOT’s Greeley-based Region 4 transportation director. In that letter, Galardi indicated that studies showed that such a parking structure would provide only “negligible” congestion relief, “no reduction in pedestrian-vehicular conflict points,” and that the alternative “does not meet the purpose and need for this project.”

Now, Lancaster told BizWest this week, all the town can do is wait for the results of the final NEPA impact study, expected late this year or early in 2016.

“The Loop as originally proposed had one bridge, but then it became three,” Lancaster said. “They still could do the Loop as originally planned.

“Raising the bridges and rechannelization is still something we need to look at,” he said. “Would CDOT still accept the bridges if they didn’t meet a 100-year flood? If we had to build the road and bridges to meet 100-year flood, the funding is inadequate to do that.

“It really comes down to what’s the objective of the project and the legislative intent of the money,” Lancaster said. “The structure doesn’t have as big an impact on congestion in Estes Park as the Loop would. If the purpose is to improve the flow, the Loop is the better option. If the purpose is to improve access to the park, the park believes — and we’ve had to agree — that the future has to be shuttles. They’re hitting their carrying capacity; they’re getting 3.5 million to 4 million visitors a year. The Loop would get people to the park faster, but it doesn’t help the capacity in the park.”

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 downtown.

Some Loop opponents suspect that the diversion of eastbound traffic onto Riverside is being pushed by some developers as a way to create a new commercial corridor there, which they say would take business away from shops on Elkhorn.

”That would be up to the private sector to do. I don’t know anyone who’s planning that,” said Lancaster, although he added that “the core downtown hasn’t grown in 40 years but the visitation has nearly tripled.”