Niwot sidewalk project moves to application process

Boulder County officials gave the go-ahead to apply for a matching grant through the Colorado Department of Transportation last week.

The $530,000 grant of federal monies would include a match from the county of $130,000. Those matching monies could potentially come out of the road and bridge fund.

The project would build a sidewalk on the south side of Niwot Road between Longview and Walker Roads.

Scott McCarey, multi-modal division manager for the county, said that the purpose is to improve safety for pedestrians going to and from Niwot High and Elementary Schools.

“It’s focused on having better pedestrian and bike connections to the schools,” McCarey said. “A big portion of the project is to have a multi-use path on the south side of Niwot between Longview and Walker Roads.”

Currently there is no sidewalk on the south side, which means any student wanting to walk or bike to school has to cross Niwot Road twice.

With a speed limit of 35 and heavy traffic — especially before and after school — it can be dangerous. Walking on the south side means being on the shoulder that is a few feet wide.

“We heard that students aren’t walking or biking to school because they have to cross Niwot twice,” McCarey said. “Elementary-aged kids and their parents aren’t comfortable doing that, it’s a safety issue.

“We’ve had a number of unfortunate accidents in the county involving bikes over the last six months. We’re trying to prevent that from happening. No one has been killed there recently, and we’re trying to keep it that way. We think this will help possible future accidents.

“We don’t want to be in a situation where the county doesn’t improve the pedestrian area until someone gets killed. We want to be more proactive on that.”

Nancy Pitz, Niwot Elementary School Principal, said that there is a desire from patrons to be able to walk or bike to school.

"Our families want to walk and bike to school,” Pitz said. “These improvements would encourage and support that.

"It goes hand and hand with encouraging our families to walk and bike to school. Not only does it help with traffic congestion, but it encourages physical activity and promotes a healthy lifestyle. Families would feel safer walking and biking to school, and in turn do it more, with the addition of new sidewalks and street crossings and improvements to existing ones."

McCarey said that the county engineer has done a preliminary estimate, but that they don’t want to do official surveys until they know the funding is secured.

The county will likely hear back on the application by early fall of this year, then begin the process of involving the community.

“The first thing we would do is set up structure for public involvement,” McCarey said. “We understand that there’s going to be two sides.

“There will be people who will be supportive of it. But we know there are other folks, like property owners, that would rather keep the rural aesthetic. They don’t necessarily want sidewalks. Or there are folks who would rather see the money spent somewhere else.”

Property owners would be the first to be contacted, he said, and then the general public would be invited to weigh in.

McCarey said that the design portion would take about six months, and public input would take about the same amount of time. He estimated that it would be spring of 2018 before work would actually begin.

“We want to make sure there is adequate time,” McCarey said. “Right now we believe it’s all in our right-of-way, so we don’t need any private property to do this.

“Technically the county can just go in there and do this project. We don’t need permission from anybody, but that’s not how we operate. We want to get feedback and try to incorporate changes the best we can.”

As this issue is considered, McCarey again emphasized the safety aspect.

“You have a lot of cars going through there with both schools,” McCarey said. “We see it as one of those downward spirals where the less safe it is to walk, it’s more likely parents will drive, which also makes it less safe to walk.

“I think with this project — at least what we’d like to do — is have more parents feel safe to walk or bike to school. This means less traffic.”

Pritz added that the district wants to do anything they can to improve the safety of students.

"Anytime we can improve safety for our students, staff, families and community it's a great thing,” Pritz said.