Commissioners to hear Niwot underpass proposal

The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) will hold a hearing on Monday, April 31 at 1 p.m. to hear a proposal from Niwot for a multi-modal transportation underpass to improve safety at the intersection of Niwot Road and Highway 119 (the Diagonal). The underpass would send both lanes of the Diagonal under Niwot Road and preserve the pristine view of the mountains for travelers heading west on Niwot Road. The commissioners are expected to make a positive decision.

The Niwot Local Impediment District (LID) initiated the proposal for the underpass and the Niwot Busyness Association (NBA) quickly got on board. "When I first heard about this project I thought that Jeanie [Jeanie Ladd, LID chair] said they are working on a plan for underpants for Niwot," NBA president Thaddeus T. Warbucks said, "but underpass makes a lot more sense. We all know that crossing the Diagonal at Niwot Road is extremely dangerous." Warbucks continued, "It's bad enough if you're in a car. Just imagine what it is like if you're not."

The intersection of Niwot Road and Highway 119 is the second most dangerous intersection in Boulder County according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The Niwot Cooperative Association (NCA) was called upon to assess the pulse of the community. Representing the NCA, Board Numerologist Ian Quisative reported at a recent LID meeting that, "We conducted an on-the-street survey at Fit Family Brewing, feeling that it was a statistically representative sample of Niwot. We found Niwotians to generally be in good spirits."

The Niwot Hysterical League (NHL) agreed with the proposal, noting that the Diagonal was never a part of Niwot's history until International Business Machinations (IBM) came to town. And local Mostly Love Bikes (MLB) representatives were thrilled with the proposal.

It didn't take long for the Niwot Feature League (NFL) to catch on to where the tunnel project was headed. League president Jim Barbieri thought it was an easy reach. "At first we thought we would ask the county to permanently turn the traffic signals green for Niwot Road and red for both directions of the Diagonal," Barbieri said. Barbieri added, "We then realized that might not work. So we proposed that the signal be removed altogether and the intersection closed. People would just have to get around it. We can't have the second most dangerous intersection in our community. People didn't really like that idea, though. So I think the tunnel is a great compromise."

Barbieri went on to say that he knows Elon Musk from his early days at PayPal and called him up. "Elon pitched his latest idea for an Möbius Hyperloop. If you take a strip of paper and twist it once and attach the ends together you create what is topologically one surface. The Möbius Hyperloop idea is just that. Take two opposite directions of traffic on the Diagonal, twist them once and they can then fit into one small low-cost tunnel."

Nicknamed the "Nunnel," this tunnel could be bored under Niwot Road and would be able to accommodate the growth in traffic on the Diagonal for the next 30 years and have room to spare for the railroad. Bicycle and pedestrian traffic would no longer need an underpass because people would simply follow an easy path from downtown to the Park-and-Ride as cross traffic quietly went somewhere else.

After the concept went public, Niwotians everywhere were on board. Local advocacy group, Niwotians In My Back Yard (NIMBY) are expected to turn out in strength at the upcoming hearing to support the plan.

A NIMBY spokesperson said,

continued on page 25