Downtown Access from Eastbound Riverside Traffic

[Travis Machalek]

Good morning Town Board,

Staff met this morning to discuss strategies to limit gridlock downtown during the remaining construction on the Downtown Estes Loop. 

We have discontinued the use of an extended closure of the northbound lane on Riverside at Elkhorn as a strategy for managing traffic. Instead, we will be approaching this problem in a three-tiered manner:

1) We will be asking CFL and FCI to allow the use of both lanes on Riverside for traffic in the evenings and on weekends.

2) CSOs will manually increase the "green-light" time for northbound traffic on Riverside at the intersection of Riverside and Elkhorn. 

3) If the above measures fail to prevent/alleviate a gridlock situation, CSOs will implement short-duration (one to two cycles of the traffic light) closures of the northbound lane on Riverside at the intersection with Elkhorn to clear gridlock. 

We are meeting again on Monday morning to debrief the outcome of this new approach. If we have had to resort to short-duration closures to manage gridlock conditions, we will install directional signage east of the Riverside/Elkhorn intersection that provides information on how to return to downtown. 

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,

TM

Travis Machalek, ICMA-CM

Town Administrator

Town of Estes Park, CO

970-577-3705

[Frank Lancaster]

Thanks yo all for addressing this.

Frank

[Kirby Hazelton]

Travis and Greg,

Thank you for this update, and for your work to mitigate concerns while keeping the project progressing. I drove through the construction (eastbound) at around 5:15 last night and again just now, and with the opening of the second lane on Riverside, it was free-flowing and fabulous! 

Many thanks, too, to whomever updated the electric signage. I love that it says "downtown left lane" and "US36 right lane." Excellent job! 

Kirby

Kirby Nelson-Hazelton

Town of Estes Park Trustee

khaz...@estes.org 

On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 10:27 AM Travis Machalek <tmac...@estes.org> wrote:

[Greg Muhonen]

Glad to hear!!

Greg Muhonen iPhone

On Jun 29, 2024, at 5:47 AM, Kirby Hazelton <khaz...@estes.org> wrote: