Just be glad you don’t live on Parker Street.
The next couple years, life is going to change and folks there may not like it too much.
It’s no fault of their own. They are just unlucky to live near a major traffic bottleneck where Fillmore Street intersects Chestnut and Interstate 25.
It’s a mess. You can see the intersection below on FlashEarth.com:
To address the nasty spider web of streets converging there, the city has conducted an extensive study of the corridor. Check it out at this link.
On the web site, you’ll find links to seven alternatives considered by Colorado Springs traffic engineers. They run the gamut from simply widening Fillmore to six lanes to closing Chestnut Street to building a bypass to loop Chestnut traffic around the intersection.
The engineers are leaning toward the design shown below in black. It is “Alternative 6″ and it involves building a bridge to carry Chestnut under Fillmore as well as a bypass over to Parker.
To get help in deciding, the city’s traffic engineers want your opinion. They have posted a survey online and want you to let them know your thoughts.
Here’s a link to the Fillmore Street Corridor Transit Study.
If enough millions can be found to build the project, it would begin soon.
Tim Roberts, senior transportation planner, said he hopes to have design work underway in 2011-12 and construction in 2013-14.
There’s a sense of urgency because the city hopes to finance the bulk of the project with its share of the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority sales tax revenue. The money the tax generates for capital improvements is scheduled to expire in 2014. The Fillmore project would be the last major project built with the funds.
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In your column about this mess at Fillmore and chestnut you state that too many streets were built too close to the interstate. Fact is the interstate was built too close to a lot of streets and the streets were there long before the interstate was built. I have lived here since 1960 and visited here in 1959 when the interstate was just being built. At that time the population was only about 65,000 and most of the interchanges were just fine for the amount of traffic then, but they didn’t look ahead far enough and within 15 years or so it was already a mess at the Fillmore interchange. The other mess is at the Tejon/Nevada interchange and that is only a few years old. The worst part is the South bound exit onto Tejon South bound where people cross three lanes of moving south bound traffic on Tejon to get to a left turn lane onto Motor City Dr. East. This was very poor planing for such a heavy traffic area.