SIDE STREETS: New trucking routes will be discussed

It sounds like a sleep-inducing topic: mapping truck routes through Colorado Springs.

Unless, of course, you live in a neighborhood where semis and other large trucks rumble through, day and night, with their pounding engine brakes and gear-grinding accelerations from stoplights.

Being designated a truck route can seriously impact the quality of life in a neighborhood. And that's why every neighborhood ought to be on hand at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Penrose Library's Carnegie Room, when a proposed new route map is to be discussed.

The map is the product of three years of work by a dozen or so volunteers made up of trucking industry representatives, city planning folk and neighborhood officials. They believe the proposed map will give truckers efficient corridors across the city while protecting neighborhoods from undue noise and congestion created by 18-wheelers and others making pickups and deliveries.

It hasn't been easy, and the fight isn't over. See the current map on my Side Streets blog.

"We don't need a truck route every block or two," said Dave Munger, chairman of the Trucking Issues Subcommittee of the Citizens' Transportation Advisory Board. Munger also reigns as president of the Council of Neighbors & Organizations and the Old North End Neighborhood.

The proposal calls for eliminating truck routes on: Circle Drive from Constitution Avenue to Fountain Boulevard; Galley Road from Circle to Powers Boulevard; Pikes Peak Avenue from Union Boulevard to Printers Parkway; Airport Road from Circle to Powers; Templeton Gap Road from Austin Bluffs Parkway to Powers; Space Village Avenue east from Platte; Cheyenne Meadows Road; 21st Street; Cheyenne Boulevard; Lake Avenue.

"This map should make life a little easier for people in those neighborhoods," Munger said.

The most controversial change would fill a missing link on Austin Bluffs between Nevada Avenue and Union near the University of Colorado's Colorado Springs campus.

"We've tried to eliminate gaps in the city's network of truck routes," Munger said.

But UCCS officials, as well as Colorado Springs Christian School, Bates Elementary, Cragmor neighborhood residents and others, are unhappy at the idea of 10,000-pound trucks rumbling up and down the parkway.

"We don't think the trucks are a good mix with the 8,000 students who call UCCS home," said Brian Brunett, vice chancellor for administration and finance. "We don't think the grades are safe for trucks. And it's just not the type of environment we're trying to build around this university."

Jan Doran, a longtime neighborhood activist and member of the truck-map group, says there are ways to mitigate the noise from added trucks on Austin Bluffs.

"We could limit the hours of operation, the use of the road during inclement weather and prohibit the use of engine brakes citywide," she said.

Rubberized asphalt might be another way to reduce the noise.
Munger said the debate is a good example of the difficulty in designating truck routes.

"We're trying to create a grid around the city to guide development - now and in the future - as the city grows, so we won't have truck routes going through residential areas," he said. "We're trying to balance the economic needs of the city, recognizing the importance of an efficient delivery system against the need for reasonable quality of life in neighborhoods."


Tell me about your neighborhood: 636-0193 or bill.vogrin@gazette.com