The Crystal River Caucus on Thursday night endorsed a proposal to build a five-mile paved bike path along Highway 133 south of Carbondale, from Snowmass Drive near the old Carbondale high school to Seven Oaks Road at the BRB Campground.
The trail is being planned and proposed by the Pitkin County Open Space and Trails department and has received conceptual approval from the Colorado Department of Transportation.
The Open Space and Trails department has recently applied to the Pitkin County commissioners for approval of the section of trail that runs through Pitkin County. A portion of the trail is also in Garfield County.
The bike path will feature a paved asphalt strip 8 to 10 feet wide for bikers and walkers, with a 4-foot-wide soft shoulder surfaced in crushed gravel for runners and equestrians.
In all, the trail will require a 16-foot-wide platform and will generally run approximately 35 to 40 feet off of the east side of Highway 133, which is popular with cyclists, but has very narrow shoulders.
Highway 133 runs south from Carbondale to Redstone, and the bike path will parallel the highway on its east, or left-hand, side.
The Open Space and Trails department has retained Tom Newland of Newland Project Resources Inc. to gain approval for the trail. He, along with Open Space and Trails Director Dale Will, described the trail to about 50 people at a caucus meeting this week.
Caucus members voted 46 to two, with two abstentions, to “accept and endorse” the plan as described by Newland and Will. That should carry significant weight with the county commissioners, who rely on feedback from a variety of local community caucuses in the county.
In the Crystal Valley master plan, caucus members have stated a goal of creating a bike path from Redstone to Carbondale, but there are no plans to design or build a bike path from the BRB Campground to Redstone.
The land-use issues in that section are considered more complex than the first section of the trail from Carbondale to BRB.
When asked if he knew how much the trail would cost, Will admitted that it is hard to say, because construction costs in the valley are rising rapidly.
“I think we’re talking millions of dollars,” said Will, noting that 20 percent of the revenue brought in by an open space and trails tax in Pitkin County is earmarked for trails. The project has also received a $1 million grant from Great Outdoors Colorado.
With regard to timeline, Will would say only that “we hope to have this thing done soon ... but there are no guarantees.”
The trail is entirely within the CDOT highway-right-of-way, except in two places where it will need to cross short portions of the Cold Mountain Ranch, owned by Bill Fales, and the Mautz Ranch Open Space parcel owned by the county.
Fales has agreed to allow the new bike path to use a portion of his ranch land.
CDOT has determined that the bike path can move forward without extensive environmental analysis, and the county is working on obtaining a “bike trail license” from the state transportation agency.
For the most part, the bike trail will be built along the route of a former railroad corridor that allowed trains to run from Carbondale to Redstone. In some sections, it will be set below the level of the highway — a tactic that should shield trail users from highway noise and the sight of rushing cars and trucks.
One caucus member asked if bikes would be banned from Highway 133 itself after the bike path is built. Newland responded that it would take an act of the state legislature to ban bikes from the highway. Another caucus member replied that bicyclists will gladly use the new bike path instead of risking their lives on the highway.
Another caucus member asked if it were possible to build an underpass near the north end of the Sustainable Settings property, as the area is frequently used by deer and elk to cross the highway. Newland responded by noting that the wildlife report commissioned for the bike path did not identify that area as a known wildlife corridor, which drew a loud laugh from the audience.
Many residents of the Crystal River Valley refer to that section of the road as “Deer Alley,” and are used to seeing large numbers of deer in the area on both sides of the highway.
In fact, the wildlife report submitted with the land-use application for the bike path states that “the project area contains ... verified highway crossing areas that are heavily used by mule deer as part of a daily movement and seasonal migration pattern.”
bgs@aspendailynews.com