A year ago, the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners approved $300,000 to redesign the intersection of Black Forest Road and Burgess Road. The money is in addition to $500,000 that was allocated for the redesign in 2006.Currently, the intersection has two lanes in all directions and a signal light. The surface is in bad shape, with lots of pot holes and bad drainage.Design plans have been completed, and some Black Forest residents aren’t happy.With left and right turn lanes in all four directions, the design increases the size of the intersection from the current 60-feet width to 112 feet in all directions.”It’s like a four-lane intersection for a two-lane road,” said Terry Stokka, member of the Black Forest Land Use Committee.The design will eliminate parking for some businesses at the intersection and decrease the size of existing and future residential lots, making them nearly unusable, said Judy von Ahlefeldt, chairwoman of the Black Forest Transportation Committee.Rebuilding the intersection according to the new design will cost almost $1 million.”The plan is far too large and expensive and does not fit the Black Forest community,” von Ahlefeldt said.From 1997 to 2007, the traffic counts for Black Forest Road as posted at the county’s Web site have gone down from 3,800 to 2,500 cars, while traffic on Burgess Road has slightly increased.”We don’t believe current traffic warrants an intersection of this magnitude,” she said. But the county’s transportation department sees the frequency of turns at the intersection as the real problem.The number of left turns trips the threshold in all four directions and the number of right turns is currently at the threshold, said Andre Brackin, county engineer.The thresholds are set by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation officials and were used to develop the county’s engineering criteria manual, he said.Brackin said the property acquisition process has already been funded; natural gas and electricity relocations are being designed by the utility companies; and the transportation department was getting ready to bid the project when Black Forest residents started objecting.”Commissioner Wayne Williams was a big proponent of the project, and with (the BOCC’s) direction, we moved forward last year,” he said.Williams was term-limited out in 2010 and is now the county clerk and recorder. His seat was filled by Darryl Glenn, who has a different take on road improvement projects.Glenn would like to see a “prioritized list” of transportation projects. “I’m almost in favor of a moratorium on these projects, until I can take a look at them,” Glenn said.The intersection does need some work, von Ahlefeldt said.Every year, Qwest has to drain water away from its cables; the power lines and an above-ground natural gas line are too close to the intersection; and the turning radius is too tight for an intersection where a lot of people tow horse trailers, she said.Von Ahlefeldt said Black Forest has several intersections with left turn lanes that are only 60-feet wide. They could be used as a model for improving the Black Forest Road and Burgess Road intersection.The problem is that once the county starts working on the intersection, they have to follow the new rules for traffic safety, and that means wider easements and wider ditches, Stokka said.”The traffic people have some flexibility in what they do, but they’re pretty steeped in the traffic standard, so it’s hard for them to do half an improvement,” he said.It’s like Hodgen Road, where the choice was between making minor safety improvements along the road’s full length and improving a little piece of it up to the gold standard.The transportation department chose the gold standard for the little piece, he said.About 90 people attended a public meeting on the plan in April.”There was pretty strong sentiment to leave the intersection as it is,” Stokka said. “We want to scale this back and save money. The county doesn’t have enough money right now, so let’s put this money somewhere better.”Glenn visited the intersection in April and plans to put an item on the BOCC’s agenda in May, with the possibility of stopping property condemnations and looking at the project more closely, Stokka said.
