Delta railroad construction complete

Daily Press

DELTA — The railroad realignment project in Delta completed last week, with minor clean-up and cosmetic tasks remaining.

For a major project primarily geared toward increasing the safety of Delta citizens, construction went rather smoothly, Assistant City Manager Steve Glammeyer said.

“Things have been fortunate for us,” Glammeyer said. “We haven’t had any major problems at public crossings, no accidents, and we’ve successfully eliminated car-train conflict points.”

In combination with the railroad realignment in Delta, 11 other railroad crossings have been repaired to eliminate car-train conflict points as far as Paonia.

With phase one of the project completed, the city is gearing up for the planning and implementation of its second phase: the alternate truck route.

“This railroad realignment gave us a backbone to start the alternate truck route project,” Glammeyer said.

The city’s plan for the bypass is to keep large trucks and unintentional traffic off Main Street, creating a safer environment for citizens of Delta and those who choose to visit the downtown area.

In addition to the increase of safety the bypass will provide for Main Street, it will also create a swifter route from north Delta to south Delta. This is one of the biggest issues behind the proposed construction.

“Right now, all of our emergency services are on the south side of the tracks,” Glammeyer said. “Emergency vehicles like fire trucks, ambulances and police officers cannot promptly respond to a call if there is a train blocking the tracks. The bypass would alleviate this problem.”

With travelers given the option to bypass downtown Delta, one might assume the flow of downtown business could decrease.

The main objective of the alternate truck route is to deter trucks from Main Street, while attracting tourists to downtown Delta.

“You would have to make a conscious decision when deciding whether or not to go through downtown, or take the bypass,” Glammeyer said. “The normal traffic will continue to do what it does right now. But trucks are not going to want to travel downtown.”

Glammeyer said that proposed bypass will be a little longer than the existing route through Main Street. However, the bypass will have a speed limit increased by 10 mph, and contain only one stoplight, as opposed to the six stoplights on Main Street.

The alternate truck route will take about two years to design and layout the initial groundwork. If the project goes according to schedule, construction should be completed sometime between 2011 and 2013.

Projects as extensive as the alternate truck route require a substantial amount of funding, which forces officials to look outside city limits for grants.

“The project will cost approximately $15 million, but that’s in today’s dollars,” Glammeyer said. “By the year that it’s finished, it will probably cost somewhere around $20 million.”

The city has applied for funding from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, and plans on interviewing for the grant application at the end of July. In addition to a grant from DOLA, the city plans to apply for funding from the Federal Highway Administration.

Under section 130 of title 23 in the United States Code of the FHWA, states are required to submit annual reports on the progress of implementing railway-highway crossing programs.

“Since we will be eliminating car train conflict areas with this bypass, we should get 90 percent of the funding from the FHWA,” Glammeyer said.

Glammeyer is also confident the alternate truck route project will be popular among Delta citizens.

“Last year, a citizen survey was sent out to the community which included a host of questions dealing with the city of Delta, one of those questions being about the alternate truck route,” Glammeyer said. “We had a 35 percent return rate on the surveys, and 86 percent of those who responded were in favor of the truck route plan that we’ve proposed.”

Marissa Brunner can be reached via e-mail at marissab@montrosepress.com