Colorado transportation officials are studying whether to replace a temporary traffic signal at Colorado Highway 83 and County Line-Palmer Divide roads with a roundabout, but construction of the project is likely still a long way off.

The Colorado Department of Transportation hasn’t secured funding for the roundabout, which officials estimate would cost up to $6 million to build, so no construction schedule has been set, said John Hall, resident engineer for southeastern Colorado in the department’s Colorado Springs office. The agency installed the signal three years ago in anticipation of traffic on Highway 83 surging amid the Interstate 25 “Gap” widening project between Monument and Castle Rock.

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Neighbors near the intersection at the El Paso and Douglas county line appeared divided on the project during an Oct. 25 open house at the Monument Academy East Campus. The president of the 87-member Hawk Ridge Homeowners Association said nearly all the association’s members oppose construction of a roundabout, while the president of the 35-member Hawk Ridge West Homeowners Association said many of that association’s members support the project.

Leaving the temporary signal at the high-speed rural intersection doesn’t appear to be an option, since the intersection doesn’t meet the department’s criteria to warrant a traffic signal and the intersection doesn’t include separate left- and right-turn lanes common at most intersections with traffic signals. Hall said the agency would provide plenty of notice before removing the signal, but would rather come up with a long-term solution that improves safety.

The department has completed preliminary designs for the roundabout, which would be about 150 feet in diameter and include right-turn lanes from southbound Highway 83 to westbound County Line Road and northbound Highway 83 to eastbound Palmer Divide Road. Hall said the agency needs more funding to complete design and acquire right of way needed for the roundabout, which would take about a year to complete before construction could begin.

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“Installing the signal has improved the safety of the intersection, but there still have been a significant number of injury accidents. Roundabouts reduce crashes and the severity of crashes because they pull speeds down and you only have to look left and yield” before entering a roundabout, Hall said.

“We are doing this preliminary design so we can move forward with a longer-term solution and hopefully secure funding for this project.”

Some neighbors of the intersection argued the agency should keep the signal in place rather than spending up to $6 million on a roundabout, but Hall said the agency would have to make significant improvements – left- and right-turn lanes in all directions – if the intersection qualified for signals. That would cost about $5 million, but the agency likely wouldn’t approve spending that much for an intersection that doesn’t meet its signal criteria, he said.

A letter to the agency from Ken Witt, president of the Hawk Ridge HOA, asked the department to leave the temporary signal in place, saying an intersection just to the south also is controlled by a signal. He argued that traffic on County Line and Palmer Divide roads would struggle to enter a roundabout during rush-hour traffic. The letter also called the roundabout a “trendy” solution that it called “wasteful and unjustified” to solve “a problem that does not exist.”

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Witt said after the open house that residents near the intersection must endure around-the-clock noise from semi-truck air brakes when the signal is red and would be subjected to such noise “all the time” as trucks slow as they approach a roundabout if it is built. He said semi-truck traffic is grown dramatically in recent years by drivers rerouting their trips to avoid the department’s weigh station on Interstate 25 in Monument.

Hall said CDOT anticipates most drivers would encounter no delays entering the roundabout, which he said will be designed to handle traffic forecasted to use the intersection through 2045. About 5,800 vehicles a day traveled last year on Highway 83 north of Palmer Divide Road and 12,000 per day traveled south of Palmer Divide Road, according to the department’s database. Those volumes are forecast to nearly double by 2045.

co-83-project-map.pdfColorado Department of Transportation