Stoplight to be installed at deadly intersection in Mancos

Stoplight to be installed at deadly intersection in Mancos

Dec. 14, 2000

By Tom Vaughan
Mancos Times Editor

A stoplight is expected to be installed by summer at the hazardous intersection of U.S. Highway 160 and Colorado Highway 184, officials with the Colorado Department of Transportation told a group of about 50 citizens Monday night in Mancos.

For years, local residents have complained that the intersection poses a danger.

In March of this year, a 12-year-old girl was killed when she was struck by a pickup while trying to cross the highway near the intersection on foot. In November 1999, a 79-year-old woman was killed and her husband seriously injured in a vehicular accident there.

Other changes that will be made to improve the intersection temporarily, the crowd was told, include eliminating any access onto the frontage roads from the intersection.

There will be no street connection between East Frontage Road and Highway 184. There will also be no street access from North Main Street to West Railroad Avenue.

More than a few people in attendance expressed concerns that the temporary fix would become the permanent one, and most weren’t very happy with the solution.

"You have totally eliminated the businesses in this community," commented Lyle Cox, owner of Cox Conoco, a business on the frontage road.

He said travelers on 160 will have to decide to exit so far in advance or will have to travel so far beyond the roadside business they might want to visit that they will just go on to Durango or Cortez.

Many in the audience wondered aloud why CDOT couldn’t just eliminate the frontage roads and widen 160 to four lanes with turn lanes and a 35-mph speed limit through Mancos.

Others expressed concern about the support system, which would route more traffic along Menefee Street, past Boyle Park, down an alley, and onto all the streets west of North Main and south of West Railroad Avenue.

The success of the long-term proposal is also contingent on the town’s improving — or creating — streets, especially west of Highway 184 and north of 160.

Plans for the interim phase of repairs to the intersection should be ready next March, the job is expected to be advertised in May, and CDOT hopes to complete the installation of the interim light and closure of the frontage roads in 30-45 days, before the summer tourism season peaks.

The long-term solution includes all of the above, plus some major modifications along U.S. 160. The price for this reconstruction project has risen to $6.3 million, according to CDOT Engineer Vicki Matney, and only $5 million has been budgeted to date, of which 83 percent will be federal funds and 17 percent state matching funds.

The 160/184 intersection would still have a stoplight, and further changes would be made, such as adding turn lanes.

The preliminary-plan review for this phase of the project should take place in February or March 2001, Matney said, with field-observation review estimated for November. Construction funding is currently scheduled for 2003, but if the funding can be obtained sooner, work could start as early as spring 2002.

Comments on the plan will be accepted until Dec. 21.