Pitkin County aims to improve Highway 82 safety, mitigate fatalities

Pitkin County commissioners unanimously expressed support last week for a Highway Safety Improvement Program grant application for Colorado Highway 82 projects at Lazy Glen and Smith Way.

At Smith Way and Juniper Hill Road, a new crossover will be installed that will force drivers to complete a U-turn rather than crossing two lanes of traffic.

If a driver is heading upvalley and wants to go down Smith Way to McLain Flats, they would drive past the current crossover to a new crossover and do a U-turn onto Highway 82. The driver would then head back downvalley and would turn right onto Highway 82.

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McLain Flats represents a relief valve for the entrance to Aspen. Several thousand cars a day use Smith Way and McLain Flats to go into town because of the backups at the entrance to Aspen, Pitkin County engineer Andrew Knapp said on Oct. 1.

The same applies if a driver is coming out of Smith Way and heading upvalley. The driver would turn right to go downvalley, proceed to a crossover downvalley and then perform a U-turn to come back upvalley.

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“And you might ask, ‘Well, why do you want to move your crossover location, what does that really gain here,'” Knapp said. “What we’re gaining is the reduction of the most severe conflict type, the broadside conflict, which you get from a traditional intersection.”

Broadside conflicts lead to the most severe accidents and injuries, as well as fatalities, Knapp said. The intersection at Smith Way has been the site of several crashes over the years, in addition to one fatality in 2018. This fatality happened due to a broadside crash.

With the proposed project, broadside conflicts will be traded for a merging side-swipe accident type, which is a much less severe and risky type of crash with less speed differential and less impact energy associated with those accidents.

“The main cause of broadside crashes is drivers failing to properly estimate vehicle speeds and/or gaps when making left-turns,” a memorandum from the Colorado Department of Transportation states. 

Research from the Colorado Department of Transportation reveals that this project will reduce accidents at this intersection up to 35% and the accidents that may happen will be less severe.

Knapp said that the proposed infrastructure, which is similar to a roundabout with the same benefits, is just more “pinched” and “stretched out.”

“I don’t think we have anything like this in Region 3 on the Western Slope of Colorado,” Commissioner Greg Poschman said. “Here we go, guinea pigs again, with the longabout.”

A “longabout” is what Poschman called the proposed infrastructure change to Smith Way. This is not the technical name of the infrastructure; however, the common name is the Michigan left turn.

“These are not new, these have been in Michigan since the ’60s,” Pitkin County Public Works Director Brian Pettet said. “We’re not testing anything, we’re just applying a new thought here at this intersection.”

The other location for a safety improvement is Lazy Glen.

There have been three crashes at the Highway 82 and Lazy Glen intersection in the past five years, and, in 2023, one of those crashes resulted in a fatality. This crash was also a broadside crash that was caused by a driver failing to properly estimate vehicle speeds or gaps when making a left turn onto the highway.

“You see it everyday right now, people stranded in that median area when high volume high speed traffic flies by and they’re looking for a gap and some people when their patience wears thin, make bad decisions, choose gaps poorly, leading to severe accidents at this location,” Knapp said.

Traffic engineers suggest adding a left-turn acceleration lane. This means that a driver turning onto Highway 82 only needs to pay attention to and find gaps in one direction of traffic. 

Three other turn lanes at this intersection already exist: a (short) left-turn deceleration lane, a right-turn deceleration lane, and a right-turn acceleration lane. 

In order to fit a full-length acceleration lane into the available space, the second access to the Lazy Glen Subdivision will be changed to right-in/right-out. 

The acceleration lane will end right at that second access. Closing the median crossover will improve safety by removing the conflicts between accelerating merging vehicles and slowing left-turning vehicles, Knapp said.

“The Lazy Glen intersection has never included an up-valley acceleration lane to allow for a safe ingress on to CO-82. The addition of an upvalley acceleration lane out of Lazy Glen will improve the safety of that movement and is anticipated to reduce crashes by 30%,” the memorandum states.

The new acceleration lane will most likely remove the current left turn lane from Highway 82 toward the pedestrian bridge over the Roaring Fork River. Access would become a right-in right-out, which will still allow emergency egress for Lazy Glen, as well as access to the pedestrian bridge for fishers and other users.

It is unknown how much these projects will cost, but they do qualify for Highway Safety Improvement Program funding. The grant application period opens at the end of the year and county commissioners expressed a willingness for county staff to move forward with the grant application process.

Based on the past six years of crash history combined with the 35% crash reduction at Smith Way, the project could qualify for up to $7.8 million of Highway Safety Improvement Program funding. The benefit/cost calculation used the past six years of crash data, 2018-2023. However, the standard is to only use the past five years of crash data, which removes the 2018 fatal crash from the calculation. The benefit/cost calculation is $4.4 million for the Smith Way project using five years of crash data.

Based on the past five years of crash history combined with the 30% crash reduction at Lazy Glen, the project could qualify for up to $2.7 million of funding.

The Colorado Department of Transportation’s Region 3, where Pitkin County is located, receives a certain amount of funding each year. Half of that is allocated to local agencies to assist with their safety projects. Region 3 will receive $3 million, so $1.5 million is available to local organizations.

Whatever is not covered by the potential grant then falls to Pitkin County.

“I think having to put out a little extra money, first of all it doesn’t sound like a high risk situation, it sounds like probably we can cover this with the funds we are going to get,” Commissioner Francie Jacober said. “I think given the severity of the accidents, that is a gruesome metric you put out by the way, about one fatality, that’s horrible.”

Commissioner Patti Clapper reflected this sentiment at the end of the meeting.

“Every life makes a difference, and every life counts,” she said.

Regan Mertz can be reached at 970-429-9153 or rmertz@aspentimes.com.