Dear Action Line: A Three Springs question: What is the plan to connect the bike and walking path to the rest of the miles of paths through Durango? Currently it ends under the Bridges to Nowhere. When those bridges connect with U.S. Highway 550, the traffic will become even busier and walking/biking more dangerous. Hopefully those of us who would like to walk and bike safely will soon have a better route. – Clayton Buchanan
Dear Clayton: Simple workaround: Action Line takes the shortcut from Three Springs to Durango – over Telegraph Trail, down to Horse Gulch and into town. No motorized traffic. Plus, it avoids that easy and relatively flat Animas River Trail entirely.
Admittedly, this route is a little difficult – particularly during mud season and in the winter. Plus, you have to outrun those Parks and Wildlife rangers when it’s closed to people. Hey! Action Line is kidding! Do NOT violate the wildlife closures. Give the deer and yeti a break.
The project to connect Three Springs with town via the river trail has been in the works for well more than a decade. The more recent plan has been to finish the Animas River Trail’s 32nd Street pedestrian bridge, and as former Durango Parks and Recreation Director Cathy Metz said on her way out, “Then we’ll be shifting our focus to the Smart 160 Trail going east toward Three Springs.”
Because of private land and financial issues, it’s not a quick path to construct. But have faith. One day, it’ll come.
“Thanks for reaching out regarding the Smart 160 East project we have been working on,” Ture Nycum, Durango’s Parks and Recreation director since July 2021, told Action Line. “We have been making some progress on the design of the trail from the Sale Barn area to the trail section in Three Springs.
“We, however, are still working through some easement and alignment issues in the middle section of the trail. We hope to be able to work through these in the coming months and continue with a full design of the trail by the fall/winter timeframe. We do have construction funding lined up through the 2005 quarter-cent sales tax fund.”
The 2005 sales tax sunsets in 2026, by the way. So Action Line suggests that proponents of Smart 160 make sure this issue stays on the front burner, and to buy local.
Dear Action Line: How much does it cost to advertise in the reader comments? – Dewey Bott
Dear Dewey: Before answering your question, readers should know this question was accompanied by a screen shot from a Durango Herald online story. One of the online “comments” was from a woman named Aliza who gets over $15K a month working part time; Aliza was kind enough to include a website to visit so you, too, can capitalize on this amazing opportunity.
That works out to $180K a year, and after doing the hard math, Action Line was shocked and disappointed to learn that’s more than Action Line gets for writing this column. Yep, some of us do things the hard way. The easy way is to become a registered nurse, be willing to work anyplace in the world that needs you, and be willing to constantly expose yourself to disease. So easy. Just ask any traveling nurse. But the easiest way is to set up some type of pyramid scheme; at least, that’s how we did it in the old days. Just a wild guess, but our innocent and helpful Aliza could be involved with one of those.
These sorts of junk ads are everywhere, endemic to online reader comments on just about any website. Keeping up with them is a FULL-time job that ruefully does NOT pay $15K a month.
Action Line asked Herald Deputy Editor Shane Benjamin about dealing with this. “Sigh,” he responded.
“We ban the user when we see these types of ads appear in the reader comments field at the bottom of a story online. They may not be deleted immediately, if they are not seen immediately. We try to keep up the best we can.”
Action Line was taken to the woodshed, fairly or unfairly, for this line from a recent column: “Or just sit back and watch the poop bags pile up, and the bombs drop endlessly on Ukraine as the planet warms and rivers run dry – you decide.”
A reader responded: “This seems a bit insensitive, to compare global warming and people being murdered, in the same sentence as not picking up dog (poop). Just saying.”
Action Line? Insensitive? That’s a bunch of … Um, that’s a piece of … OK, that’s just wrong.
Email questions and suggestions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. Also use this email to sign up for Action Line’s Melaluca business.
