City makes progress on Mason transit corridor

Construction has begun on a portion of the city of Fort Collins’ Mason Transportation Corridor – once envisioned as a sort of combined alternative transportation superhighway and linear park running north to south across the city.

Master planning for the project, which follows Mason Street from Mountain Avenue to Harmony Road, began nearly a decade ago as citizens voted to fund design work in 1997 through a tax initiative called Building Community Choices.

Fort Collins resident Bob Flynn is well acquainted with the corridor vision. Flynn served on the Mason Street Lead Team, which made recommendations to the city regarding the Mason corridor design.

The concept of a north-south bike-pedestrian-rapid transit corridor spanning Fort Collins is very important, Flynn said, “mainly to provide a kind of backbone for the city’s alternate transportation projects.”

Flynn sees a somewhat watered-down version of the plan as construction begins. Parts of the project have been scaled back after Fort Collins voters declined to approve to tax initiatives that would have funded the Mason Transportation Corridor project as well as others.

“It will probably be more of a recreation trail to start with,” Flynn said, “rather than the kind of long commuter trail we originally designed.” The trail is missing some of the underpasses hoped for at major intersections. Those may come in the future, he noted.

The landscaping and lighting along the trail will be more limited and construction will be stretched out over a longer term. “Instead of building it all at once we’ll just have to stretch it out over many years and, hopefully, it will be done in my lifetime,” Flynn said.

Fort Collins Senior Transportation Planner Kathleen Bracke said that it isn’t surprising that the Mason Street Transportation project is taking a long time to complete. The years reflect the project’s magnitude. “It takes a long time to develop the vision for the corridor that people reach agreement on, then it takes a long time to secure funding,” Bracke said.

“There’s always the hope that something can be implemented as quickly as possible,” she added. “But any project or effort this large in terms of its scope and various facets it’s very realistic that it has taken this long.”

Despite perception of a slower process, work on the project continues. Since master plan work was completed in 2000, Bracke said the city has been working on various funding options in order to implement a bus-rapid-transit element of the plan and building a portion of the bike-pedestrian trail system.

By the end of the summer, about three and a half miles of the bike-pedestrian trail system should be in place. The completed portion stretches from the Spring Creek trail south to the new Fossil Creek trail.

“Actually a lot of people are already using it,” she noted. “We just recommend people be cautious because the trail isn’t complete and they may come upon active work areas.”

The completion of this section represents the end of phase one of the corridor project, at a cost of about $2.8 million, Bracke said. About $2 million of that came from a quarter-cent sales tax approved as part of the BCC initiative. The remaining $800,000 was secured as grant funding from Colorado Department of Transportation and Great Outdoors Colorado.

Phase two under way

Design of the next phase of the bike-pedestrian trail is under way, Bracke said. “We’ve been working with CSU on the design work to extend the trail north from the Spring Creek trail across Prospect through campus up to Laurel Street.”

Design work on that portion of the trail should be complete in early 2007, Bracke said. “But we’ll have to secure additional grant funding for construction.”

Grant funding already is available from CDOT and the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization for design and construction of a bike-pedestrian underpass beneath the Burlington-Northern Santa Fe railroad. The underpass will connect the Whole Foods/University Mall shopping center with the Natural Resources Research Center and Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital on Drake Road. This project is scheduled to be complete in 2007 or 2008.

Meanwhile, the city is pursuing grant funding to begin the bus rapid transit or BRT element of the Mason Corridor project. Bracke said the city is submitting a transit application to the state for funding to begin the system from the downtown transit center to the main CSU campus.

Concurrently the city is working with the Federal Transit Center on obtaining funding through its NewStarts program. NewStarts is designed to help build new BRT and light rail projects.

BRT is a hybrid of light-rail and regular bus services. From a passenger standpoint, BRT systems resemble light rail, offering high-frequency service, with vehicles arriving typically every five to 10 minutes.

The vehicles run on rubber tires so aren’t limited to railway tracks, and thus can run either on city streets or dedicated concrete guideways. The Mason Transportation Corridor plan combines both with BRT running partly on streets and, south of Prospect Road, on a guideway adjacent to the railroad tracks.

Bracke said the goal has been to have the BRT system from downtown to a transit center south of Harmony Road in place by 2010. “But again, that’s contingent upon the funding.”

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