South Townsend access management to soon be subject of public meetings

MONTROSE — Public meetings on the South Townsend Access Control Plan should be set within the next two months, city officials said Thursday.

The city of Montrose is working with the Colorado Department of Transportation on the plan, which basically manages the locations where vehicles enter and exit the roadway.

“The reason it’s important is because when you have a land use change, which we’ve had lots of in the past five to 10 years along South Townsend ... you get increased traffic conflicts, possibly increase traffic accidents, which deteriorates your level of service,” city engineer Jason Ullmann said at the city council’s Thursday work session.

Benefits of managing access include improvements to safety and preservation of system performance. If access management is applied in a sound manner it has been proven to reduce crashes by 30 to 60 percent, according the CDOT figures Ullmann presented.

The city currently does practice access management on the roads it controls by requiring such things as setbacks from intersections on corner lots.

The biggest change to the new plan compared to the one the city adopted in 2003 is the re-routing of Chipeta Road, said Kerwin Jensen, community development director. The road would not come out of the existing location but would go parallel to the bike path that goes behind the Ute Indian Museum and would come out onto the highway a little bit further south. This change would make the exit come out at a safer location up the highway, he said.

Access management would include aspects such as traffic signal spacing and right-in/right-out, Jensen said. The most effective way to do these is with some sort of center median.

Changes implemented by the plan would be phased, as projects are constructed, developments come in and funding is available, city officials said.

A plan was previously adopted by the city but was never adopted by CDOT.

Ullmann said the goal of that plan is to reduce collisions, improve traffic flow, increase pedestrian/bicycle safety and create an attractive highway corridor.