Yes, right now north Main Avenue is a mess.
There is an ongoing CDOT project to rehabilitate the roadway, and an unexpected but necessary repair to the bridge over Junction Creek.
Add additional work on sidewalks and curbs to make them compliant with the ADA – the Americans with Disabilities Act – and throw down what seems to be every road cone in the county, and what do you expect?
The road looks and drives more like a rally car course than the main north-south corridor through town.
Patience is in order, and a bit more driving time, especially when students and staff are arriving or departing Durango High School.
Despite appearances, a smoother, safer and more accessible north Main Ave. will be the result. We should be enjoying the facelift by Memorial Day, and not just in automobiles.
Narrower traffic lanes will free up space for bike lanes in both directions. The new sidewalk ramps will beckon walkers, wheelchairs, rollers and strollers. And 30 additional sidewalk ramps are scheduled to be built on the street before the end of 2018. These are all welcome improvements.
Just as welcome was the city’s scramble to “piggyback” the ramp project onto the CDOT project, a creative reaction after two attempts to bid the project independently failed to bring an affordable estimate.
Combining a federal alternative transportation grant with matching local funds and adding a big boost from CDOT was a complicated recipe, but exactly the mix needed to get ramp construction underway. And high time, too, access advocates pointed out: the ADA has been in place for 25 years.
The project is also a notable, “ground floor” start on the goal of turning north Main Ave. into much more than a conduit for cars.
Durango Business Improvement District Executive Director Tim Walsworth said the changes are essential to make north Main more pedestrian-friendly, and a more attractive locale for businesses and residential development.
“Downtown 2.0,” he calls it, and we like the concept.
Turning it into reality will raise some dust and require more traffic cones, but it should be worth the wait.
