I was at the city’s midtown safety improvement feedback meeting at the public library more than a month ago. Good suggestions from the cycling and business community were made to address the mess at malfunction junction, 15th Street, 3rd Avenue and Florida Road. The project manager emphasized the staff preference of Durango’s first mini-roundabout, saying that “hard enineering is still needed.”
In that case, why is the City Council giving the nod to move forward with this experiment, despite winter safety concerns regarding the grade at 15th Street?
In 2012, the city excavated the intersection to lower the elevation. It was necessary to efficiently move the northbound traffic. Now, the city would haul earth in to build back the elevation hastily removed. It doesn’t take a civil engineer to know you need flat ground for a functional roundabout.
The city owns plenty of flat ground on the northwest corner, but either it doesn’t look at Geographic Information Systems maps, the city is not aware of what happened in 2012 or it’s ignoring the comon sense option. Which is it? Rather than seeking a practical, sustainable solution that might actually handle increased traffic 20 years from now, city leaders apparently would rather move earth – as long as taxpayers are picking up the tab. We have become a city eager to hire consultants rather than use our own heads.
Tom Darnell
Durango
