Election 2008

Florida Road plan presented
City engineer revises road design- Public will have chance to weigh in again
by Ann Butler
Herald Staff Writer

After a summer of public meetings and months of follow-up designing, the city engineer's office has created a revised plan for rebuilding Florida Road.

On Thursday, City Engineer Greg Boysen presented the design to a small group of seven people, many of whom were cyclists. In the plan, the street would be asphalt, and a 5-foot wide bike lane would be concrete, making for a safer ride.
"Asphalt always settles," Boysen said. "It takes a couple of years and then it should be a fairly tight seam with the concrete for 20 or 30 years."
City sweepers would clean the bike lane as well as the road, which they currently do not do.
A 10-foot wide sidewalk would run the length of the north side of Florida, where there is a southern exposure. The city's Parks and Recreation Department agreed to keep the sidewalk plowed if it was that wide.
"Probably the biggest thing I heard in the summer hearings was that people didn't want to have to walk around the block and shovel snow off the sidewalk in their backyard, too," Boysen said.
Because of limited rights-of-way, there isn't room for a 10-foot sidewalk on both sides of the road, he said.
The plan also includes closing Spruce Drive and Elm Place where they intersect with Florida, reorienting North College Drive to align it with Quasar Street and reorienting O'Brien Drive so it enters Florida at a 45-degree angle.
After requests for landscaping and landscaped medians, plans include a 5-foot wide strip on both sides of the road that will have trees every 40 feet and probably cedar mulch on the ground in between. Boysen thought the space could be used to feed people on the south side of the road to crosswalks where they could access the sidewalk on the northern side.
"People don't need to walk on sidewalks everywhere," Kirk Rawles, who owns a home just off Florida, said. "I think that area would be walkable and rideable."
Marv Dworkin suggested using crushed red rock instead of the cedar mulch for the strip surrounding the trees.
"That would be walkable, mountain-bikeable and even baby 'buggyable,'" he said.
Boysen said traffic signals might be proposed for the Riverview Drive and the North College Drive intersections.
"The signal at North College probably won't be an issue," he said. "A lot of traffic to and from the college turns there, there are two bus stops, and the northeast map shows Quasar connecting with Animas Village on 32nd Street."
The next step, hiring a design team and contractor, won't take place unless the $17.6 million bond issue for Florida Road passes on Tuesday.
The bond issue, which is not a new tax, would permit the city to use sales-tax revenues approved by voters in 2005. The same revenues were used to bond for the new Durango Public Library.
Further public meetings would be held before the design is finalized, with construction scheduled to take about two years beginning in the spring of 2009.
"Thank you, Greg, because you really listened," Jenny Wrenn, co-chairwoman of Healthy Lifestyle La Plata, said. "I can see you trying to do what people asked."