Infrastructure’s pace can be so slow that it is hard to tell if it’s happening at all. Thanks to Boulder County Government and its partnership with CDOT, the case in Boulder County is an exception.
In list form, here’s a summary.
- Separated hard surface paths parallel to highways
- US 36 Boulder – Westminster, complete
- Highway 119 The Diagonal Boulder – Longmont, under construction
- US 36 North Foothills Highway Boulder – Lyons, approved to seek funding for design and construction
- Highway 7 Arapahoe Boulder – Brighton, in planning for about 10 years to come
- US 287 Safety Updates, pending approval design-construction January, 2025 (this is one of or the most dangerous roads for autos in the county)
- South Boulder Road Boulder – Louisville, in planning and advancing to design and construction
- Highway 66 Longmont – Lyons, in planning
- Highway 52, in planning
- Regional soft surface trails independent of roadways
- The LoBo, nearly complete
- The Coal Creek Trail, complete
- The BERT, approved to seek funding for design and construction
- The St. Vrain Greenway, next up after more progress is made on the above
- The “Farmers’ Ditch Trail” Boulder Reservoir to Lyons, failed years ago due to resistance from landowners and ditch owners
- Bike-able shoulders improved as needed and as maintained throughout the county on lower/volume speed county roads
- Regional Mountain Trails / Connections to the West, paused. But look at the great work of the BMA.
By plan, all of the above are connected in a network that includes roadways with safety improvements, paths, soft surface trails, bike-able shoulders, connections to singletrack trailheads, improved transit like bus rapid transit, and–someday–rail. Throw in planned wildlife crossings and the system is even better.
It’s not perfect. The county improved Hygiene Road which is popular with cyclists, weighed the cost of widening the shoulder for safety, and decided that those funds would be better applied elsewhere given the costs and complexities.
If you’re one of the many highly skilled cyclists around Boulder County, a separated hard surface path may be less appealing to you than the shoulder of, say, US 36 North Foothills Highway. For the majority though, the choice will be there.
The principal problem is that the funding for stand-alone multi-modal (bicycle-pedestrian) infrastructure lags far behind the funding for roadways. It’s a small fraction when compared to roadway funding.
Infrastructure is the or a primary conditioning factor in outcomes related to safety, opportunity, land-use, water conservation, emissions for climate, emissions for health, environment, and equity. Boulder County’s leading standard of network multi-modal design-use of right-of-way is demonstrating the way forward on a comprehensive basis.
Things get done with a plan and a budget. The plan is there, the budget is lagging behind.