Road Swap!!

Montrose and the Colorado Department of Transportation have formally agreed to exchange a state highway for a city street in a deal that makes sense for state taxpayers and gives the growing city more flexibility in revamping its main downtown street.

It is a smart type of deal that might make Colorado cities and towns sit up and take notice as budgets tighten and the mission of a state highway returns to being more of a between-cities route than a town’s main street.

In the swap, CDOT is turning over ownership, including maintenance costs, of three-quarters of a mile U.S. 50 – known as Main Street – to the city of Montrose. In exchange, the city is turning over to CDOT ownership of the one-and-one-third-mile San Juan Avenue bypass the city built around the north side of town connecting Main Street with Townsend Avenue at the south end of Montrose Regional Airport.

CDOT estimates the swap will save it $749,100 over 10 years, most of it from not having to reconstruct Main Street a part of the state highway system. The city completed the bypass in 2000, and built it to full CDOT state highway standards in anticipation of one day making the swap.

The deal realigns U.S. 50, although it might take a few years for all the national maps to catch up to the switch. For through drivers, it lops off three-tenths of a mile in distance, eliminates three traffic signals and eight pedestrian crossings along Main Street and three more signals on Townsend Avenue headed north, and gives them full-width 12-foot lanes and a higher speed limit. It will shorten their trip through Montrose by nearly two minutes.

A safety study predicts a 60-percent reduction in accidents amounting to a net savings to the public of $581,200 and a 78-percent reduction in injuries.

What Montrose gets is full control over what happens on Main Street, where city and business leaders plan for revitalization. Making it a city street cuts down on red tape, with CDOT not having to be involved in micromanaging such things as parking, driveway access and other strictly local issues.

Can you say “win-win?”

Before the swap, U.S. 50 followed Main Street, the green line, into the heart of downtown. The San Juan Avenue bypass, the red line, skirts the main part of town to the north.

The impacts of the swap are shown on this map, with U.S. 50 moved to the bypass, Main Street becoming a city street and U.S. 550 extended north on Townsend Avenue to meet the new junction with U.S. 50.

According to a joint Montrose-CDOT report to the Colorado Transportation Commission, Montrose was the seventh fastest-growing ‘micropolitan’ area – population under 50,000 – in the United States in 2007. The growing city is the commercial center of the regional Uncompahgre Valley area. The commission approved the swap last week.

“Our community has anticipated the realization of this opportunity for many years,” said Mary Watt, Montrose city manager. “I am thrilled about the Transportation Commission’s decision and anxious to move forward with the possibilities that it has created for downtown Montrose.” Watt said the deal is a major step toward the city’s goal of revitalizing the downtown area.

To view Main Street in Google Maps Street View, click on the photo and drag the view right and left or click on the Main Street arrow to move up and down the street. Click on the expand box at the upper right corner to go to full-screen view.

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To view the San Juan Avenue bypass in Google Maps Street View, click on the photo and drag the view right and left or click on the San Juan Avenue arrow to move up and down the street. Click on the expand box at the upper right corner to go to full-screen view.

View Larger Map

For through-drivers, and importantly for safety’s sake, the swap reduces the number of access points and traffic crossing conflicts through downtown. Parking, driveways and pedestrians present unnecessary hazards for through traffic.

On Main Street, there is one full-movement access point an average of every 132 feet. On the bypass, there is one every 898 feet on average.

The San Juan Avenue bypass basically is a shortcut, connecting U.S. 50’s east side entry into town with its west side entry. It cuts the diagonal on the current routing – old U.S. 50 enters goes through Montrose on Main Street from the east, then makes a 90-degree right turn at Townsend to head northwest toward Olathe and Delta. U.S. 550, a spur of the main highway, originates at that intersection and heads south on Townsend toward Ridgway and Ouray.

Under the realignment, the portion of Townsend north of the Main Street intersection to the junction with the bypass, which had been U.S. 50, will be redesignated as a portion of U.S. 550 so that it still intersects with its “parent” road.

See a slide show of U.S. 50 in Montrose:

To expand to full screen and read the captions, first click on the “play” button and then click on the box that will appear at the lower right corner — with the four little arrows pointing outward. When the full screen appears, click on “Show Info” at the menu bar on the top right.

U.S. 50 is one of the major U.S. highways that went cross-country when the system was designated in 1926. Its number represents its position in the middle of the country – even-numbered U.S. highways ending in “0” were considered the major routes, with the lowest numbers crossing in the north and increasing as you go south. U.S. 50 was the midpoint. In 1956, when the Interstate Highway System was created, it was the opposite. Even-numbered interstates still went east-west, but with the lowest numbers in the south and increasing as you go north, to avoid confusion with U.S. highways using the same numbers.

For that reason, there is no Interstate 50. Since it would have run generally in the same corridor across the country as U.S. 50, it was left out to avoid being confused with the older highway.

U.S. 50 originally went from Annapolis, Md., to Sacramento. In 1948, it was extended literally coast-to-coast, between San Francisco and Ocean City, Md. California cut it back to Sacramento after completing Interstate 80.

U.S. 550’s northern terminus has always been at Main Street in Montrose, but its southern end, using the Million Dollar Highway, has been extended from Durango to, first, Shiprock, N.M., and then to Farmington and, currently, Bernalillo.