Since its completion in 2011, Durango’s infamous Bridge to Nowhere has perched unused over U.S. Highway 160, dangling its $46.5 million price tag, with nary a purpose other than to remind motorists of its unfulfilled promise to transport them more safely onto the Florida Mesa and onto U.S. Highway 550 south.
As the most glaring feature of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s plan to realign the Farmington Hill intersection, the bridge’s uselessness sits in Durango’s collective craw as a symbol of bureaucratic ineptitude. Now, though, progress on Wilson Gulch Road will give the bridge a purpose in the foreseeable future – albeit one less critical than its long-term role. It is a start.
The road under construction will not link motorists to U.S. Highway 550 south, but Wilson Gulch Road will provide secondary access to Three Springs and Mercy Regional Medical Center. That will ease traffic pressure at the existing Three Springs traffic signal and send traffic over the now-defunct bridge to head north into the growing development. Doing so will, presumably, attract more commercial and residential activity to Three Springs and as such, has prompted a three-way investment from the city of Durango, La Plata County and CDOT. Together, the three entities will pay $8.2 million to construct the 4,000-foot road connecting U.S. Highway 160 to Three Springs.
That is valuable as far as it goes and may well be a prerequisite for drawing the large retailers developers targeted for the 256,000 square feet of prime big-box commercial space they plan to build in Grandview. It is a long way, however, from fulfilling the Bridge to Nowhere’s intended purpose.
The delay that gave the bridge its unfortunate – if not particularly creative – name, originally hinged on incomplete negotiations with landowners on the Florida Mesa, whose acreage would be affected by CDOT’s proposed rerouting of U.S. Highway 550. With those discussions largely settled, the issue now is money, and lots of it. CDOT estimates it will cost up to $91 million to complete the interchange and Farmington Hill realignment. Where that money will come from remains an open question, and until there is an answer – likely many months from now – the bridge will continue to loom larger than its function currently warrants.
In the meantime, some progress toward commissioning the bridge is welcome, and if the Wilson Gulch Road connection draws the activity that developers hope it will, the community will benefit. The city of Durango’s $2.64 million, La Plata County’s $1.3 million and CDOT’s $4.29 million is a not insignificant investment of limited funds. The return, in terms of easing access to a growing development, attracting future sales tax dollars and increasing driver safety can justify such an outlay. It does not solve the entire Bridge to Nowhere problem, but it is a step – however small – in the right direction.
