Last weekend’s death of a young girl at the intersection of Highways 160 and 184 in Mancos emphasized the tragic fact that highway development in rural Colorado has not kept pace with growth.

The Colorado Department of Transportation has a finite budget, and the demands for improvements are much greater along the Front Range. Even with the dramatically increased income from the governor’s plan to borrow against future federal transportation funds, there’s never going to be a lot left over for the Western Slope. In addition, CDOT just spent a big chunk of money improving the M&M intersection of County Road G and Highway 160/666. It’s wishful thinking that another big piece of the transportation district’s budget will come to Montezuma County anytime soon.

But that doesn’t make the needs disappear. The Mancos intersection has been a problem for many years and has recently been made worse by development on the north side of Highway 160. There are more vehicles moving through the intersection in all directions, and more pedestrians and bicyclists as well. It’s only going to get worse, because the population isn’t going to decrease. And in another couple months, the tourist season will be upon us.

So we have a problem and no funding for a solution; what can we do? Lobbying may help, but it can’t create money where there is none. We’re not the only county in Colorado that has more highway-construction needs than CDOT has funds to meet.

One action we can take is to request other designs. The construction required to place a four-way traffic light at the intersection is not something that can be accomplished this week or even this year, but other, short-term fixes can be applied until we can achieve the optimal solution. At the very least, CDOT needs to acknowledge that both foot and vehicle traffic need to be handled differently. It’s the responsibility of the Department of Transportation to manage that traffic so that everyone is safe. Undoubtedly that means slowing traffic considerably more than current signage requires. Perhaps it means a walkway over the highway, or a large culvert underneath. Perhaps it requires creative ways to funnel traffic onto the highway at differentimes.

The long-term solution will require acceleration and deceleration lanes, because part of the problem right now is the limited visibility caused by vehicles slowing down to turn. Those vehicles could turn to the south at two other locations. Traffic to the north is a little more problematic, but diversions can be accomplished.