COLORADO SPRINGS — It’s a common complaint as more and more people call southern Colorado home: the condition of our roads and increasing traffic congestion.
How would you diagnose the state of our local road system?
It’s a surprisingly polarizing question.
“The roads themselves I think are pretty good,” motorist Jim Fox said.
“It’s just… it’s just bad,” motorist Jim Lahey said.
Some of you, less concerned about the physical condition of our road.
“It’s the traffic,” Fox said.
Others… not so much.
“There’s more potholes than there are lakes in the United States,” Lahey said
The voter-approved 2C project has pumped millions of dollars into road repairs and filling potholes in Colorado Springs. As for congestion, Colorado Springs’ head traffic engineer, Todd Frisbie, says that’s the biggest hurdle facing our road system.
“The public said one of their number one concerns was congestion,” Frisbie said.
He’s referencing public survey responses the city received as part of its Connect COS plan studying future traffic needs for the area.
“I don’t think the city has a significant congestion problem, I think we have pockets,” he said. “The Platte Avenue corridor… Powers corridor… Garden of the Gods corridor… Academy Boulevard… parts of Union, Nevada and Austin Bluffs… and then kind of Woodmen and I-25.”
Knowing those congestion pockets exist is part of why the city embarked on Connect COS.
“What are those future projects that we need to be thinking about,” Frisbie said.
It’s why he says a study is underway to figure out the best way to improve the congested Platte Avenue corridor.
“As you get into the city, we’re calling it what we call a constrained corridor, there’s not room to widen,” he said.
With limited space to make improvements, it’s where we get some of our more innovative intersection designs.
“You look at, how do we provide--how do we manage that traffic,” Frisbie said.
