Arapahoe Road: What role ... roles?

Future of southeast metro arterial packs a load of traffic 'ifs'

John Aguilar, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 21, 2006 at midnight

Text size

More Local News

More stories »

CENTENNIAL - Main Street in this young city isn't the tree-lined road in the middle of town where people wave to each other from the doorways of hair salons and hardware stores.

It's Arapahoe Road, a six-lane state highway bordered by office buildings and strip malls. Any exchange of greetings must compete with the din of traffic rushing past at 55 mph.

But Mayor Randy Pye says while Arapahoe Road might not look the part, "it's evolved into our Main Street."

"This is really how new cities are beginning to develop," Pye said of his community of 103,000 that was patched together five years ago from unincorporated parts of Arapahoe County. "You don't have the opportunity to create a downtown."

To establish its identity, Pye says Centennial must have a prominent role in shaping the future of Arapahoe Road. Given the competing interests, that job won't be easy.

Arapahoe Road - or Colorado 88 - serves as a major east-west route across the southeast metro area, carrying an average of 55,000 vehicles daily between I-25 and Parker Road, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

It's heavily used because it's one of just a few routes - besides I-225, E-470, and the East Broncos Parkway/Easter Avenue corridor - across this part of town.

The backups on Arapahoe Road, particularly at rush hour and at the interchange with I-25, have prompted the county, CDOT, RTD, and cities along this 4 1/2-mile stretch to get together to look for solutions.

The Arapahoe Road Corridor Study, an $800,000, 18-month study, is in its fourth month.

The first public meeting on the study will be Thursday at the Arapahoe Library District Support Services Building in Englewood.

"We'd like to see a corridor that is a livable corridor, with mobility east to west, where travel times, safety, and accessibility issues are addressed," said Bryan Weimer of the Arapahoe County Department of Public Works.

With traffic on that stretch of Arapahoe Road projected to increase to more than 72,000 vehicles a day by 2025, some officials fear it's only a matter of time before congestion worsens from a nuisance to a quagmire.

"What I am really concerned about is slowing speeds," said Greenwood Village Mayor Nancy Sharpe, who sits on the study's executive committee and whose city encompasses Arapahoe Road at the study's west end. "I don't want further degradation of mobility."

Sharpe's concerns about maintaining mobility are echoed by CDOT and Arapahoe County, both of which are study participants and take a broad view of the area's transportation issues.

"What kind of relief is needed in that corridor?" asks Pam Hutton, CDOT's director for the Denver metro region.

However, Pye insists that mobility is only part of the problem, and not even the most important part.

He cites Centennial's plans for future commercial development along the corridor as critical to the financial stability of his city, which largely relies on sales tax revenue.

"The biggest point is that whatever we do along Arapahoe Road, it must allow businesses to be economically viable," Pye said.

He said Arapahoe County's original concept to turn the segment between I-25 and Parker Road into an "urban freeway," as recommended in its 2001 Transportation Plan, alarmed him at first.

That plan called for an expansion of Arapahoe Road from six to eight lanes and the construction of flyovers at Havana Street, Potomac Street and Jordan Road, which Pye said would have eliminated direct access to businesses near those intersections.

"Part of my job is to stand up and say, 'Wait,' " he said. "I've got to protect our business community and its economic viability."

Pye hopes that one day the city can build a more pedestrian-friendly civic plaza on a side street jutting off Arapahoe Road.

Until then, Pye says traffic relief can be brought to Arapahoe Road without turning it into a superhighway. One of his suggestions is to eliminate the toll on E-470 between Parker Road and I-25 to encourage motorists to use this "underutilized" segment of the beltway.

Arapahoe County Commissioner Susan Beckman said the mayor need not worry, because the concept of an urban freeway through Centennial is outdated.

"The vision for Arapahoe Road was very different before the establishment of Centennial," said Beckman, also a member of the study's executive committee.

But Beckman cautions that she can't take a purely parochial view of the county's transportation needs by focusing on the concerns of just one city.

"It doesn't help Centennial if people can't get through and can't move," Beckman said. "You have to look at the corridor as a whole - you don't have moats and bridges and walls that separate cities. They are intertwined."

So far, there appears to be agreement on two things: improving the I-25 interchange and building an interchange at Parker Road.

But beyond that, a final blueprint for this stretch of Arapahoe Road hasn't been sketched out.

Beckman said that the corridor study has at least prodded officials to unify around a future plan and "get in line for funding."

"When you go for money, you better be on the same page," she said. "Because no one listens to people who are infighting."

Even then, the money to build the project will be hard to come by. And any actual construction won't be done for another couple of decades.

"The fiscal restraints on this are just going to be overwhelming," said O'Neill Quinlan, an RTD director who sits on the study's executive committee. "CDOT doesn't have the money to buy a nightcap for a bed bug."

The Denver Regional Council of Governments, which tackles transportation problems across the metro area, has identified about $115 million for Arapahoe Road corridor improvements in its 2030 Metro Vision plan.

But Steve Rudy, transportation operations manager for DRCOG, warned that any drastic changes to the road's design that might come out of the study would require DRCOG to reassess Arapahoe Road's place in its list of funding priorities.

Which means that Arapahoe Road will likely never shrink to two lanes with angled parking and speed bumps.

Pye doesn't think it needs to.

The mayor said, if managed wisely, the six-lane thoroughfare can serve well as the civic backbone of Centennial.

"We've laid the foundation, now we need to build the community," he said.

Volume projections

• For major east-west routes between Parker Road and Interstate 25:

2004 2025

Arapahoe Road 54,900 72,100

E-470 34,700 53,800

I-225 105,400 137,000

Source: CDOT

aguilarj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2550