Highway 105: Fixing roads takes more than asphalt

High on El Paso County’s wish list of road projects is fixing an antiquated two-lane stretch of Highway 105 from just east of Interstate 25’s Monument exit to Highway 83.

Built before the housing boom boosted the population in Northern El Paso County, 105 is often clogged with traffic and there are a number of safety concerns that come with having more wheels on the road.

“We’ve been looking at 105 for some time now,” said El Paso County Engineer Andre Brackin. “There’s been increasing traffic in the northern part of the county, with growth and development. It’s going to be fairly soon that we’re going to have to do capacity improvement.”

An advisory committee of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments agreed the highway should be included as one of 200 projects in the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan, but when the final version came out, Highway 105 was nowhere to be found.
County officials were baffled.

“Frankly, I think a lot of folks were surprised that it did not make the top list,” said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark, who also serves as chair of the PPACG board.

After further discussion, Highway 105 was added to an amended version of the plan, but not as a priority project to be paid for with prized federal and state dollars. It’s marked to be financed with local dollars — essentially a placeholder designation, since the county doesn’t have the money to take it on. The designation simply gets 105 in line to qualify for federal money, should any become available.

The process left El Paso County officials feeling snubbed, and it’s sparked discussion over how PPACG determines which transportation projects make the cut, and whether the county is getting its fair share of state and federal transportation money.

“There was some displeasure with the way the prioritization was done,” Clark said. “We pay dues into PPACG that go into lots of things. We want to assure that citizens are getting a return on their investment.”

PROJECTS BATTLE FOR CASH

PPACG is the Pikes Peak area’s Metropolitan Planning Organization helping 16 county governments and municipalities work together to address regional issues and coordinate planning. Under federal law, it’s required to come up with short- and long-term transportation plans, a complicated process that has members jockeying for federal and state funding — especially because few local governments have the resources to tackle major transportation projects on their own.

Work on the 2035 plan began about two years ago, said PPACG spokesman Jason Wilkinson, and about 500 projects proposed by member governments were thrown into the mix. But with a $3 billion cap on funding, officials decided the pool would have to be winnowed down to 200 for the final plan.

Three groups worked independently to narrow the list, using a complex formula to rank projects based on 16 weighted criteria. The three sets of recommendations were mostly in agreement, save for about seven projects.

Highway 105 did not score well, but one of the groups, the Technical Advisory Committee, recommended that it be on the list of 200 projects anyway by using money earmarked for another project.

“The justification provided by the TAC for bypassing 60 higher-scoring projects that were unfunded is ... newly acquired safety data which provide updated crash information as well as the results of El Paso County’s ongoing corridor study,” minutes of an October board meeting note.

A second group, the Community Advisory Committee also had 105 on its list. But PPACG staff omitted 105 because it scored so low under the board-approved formula. Staff members also said the money could be used to fund five other projects.

“There were three sets of 200 projects, with a six- or seven-project difference,” said Rob MacDonald, PPACG’s executive director. “We rolled those out to the board; the board said, ‘here’s what we agree to.’ We thought all was well because the plan was adopted unanimously by everyone.”

But county officials were not pleased, and even though further discussion got Highway 105 in the long-range plan, they still felt something was wrong with the process.
“Generally, I’m in disagreement that the PPACG staff would put forward a different set of recommendations from the technical committee,” Brackin said. “What I would like to see is the technical committee and staff have a unified set of recommendations to put to the board of directors.”

HIGHWAY CHOICES SPARK TENSIONS

The flap over Highway 105 also had county commissioners asking whether El Paso County was getting a “return on investment” on the $182,000 it pays in dues each year to PPACG — a concern that was apparently addressed at a meeting held last month to discuss procedures. MacDonald noted that the county has $7 million in projects in the plan, and has received millions of dollars more in previous years.

“I think there is definitely good return on investment,” Clark said Thursday. I just think there needs to be improvement with the PPACG system.”

In the most recent round of planning, there appeared to be misunderstandings, miscommunication, and what some commissioners felt were 11th-hour “surprises,” Clark said.
Wilkinson acknowledged the process is complicated, cumbersome and often highly technical, and indicated that elected officials — busy with many other duties — may have missed important information buried in reams of paperwork.

“One commissioner said, ‘I’d really like a timeline for knowing what these decision processes are.’ Well, that was in the board packet,” Wilkinson said.

Basically, he said, it’s a communications issue, and he plans to improve it.

“I need to be mindful that information is not communication,” he said. “As this commissioner said, ‘I get a lot of packets.’ It would make sense that the PPACG staff might highlight the important information, maybe provide a calendar of, ‘here are the decision points and when they have to be made’.”

PPACG also changed procedures to make sure the head of its Technical Advisory Committee attends the board meetings to answer questions, and there could be other tweaks coming out of future meetings.

As for Highway 105? Clark hopes there will be more amendments to the plan that will make it a higher-priority project suitable for federal funding. MacDonald also said a possible ballot initiative to extend a portion of a regional sales tax could, if passed, produce additional money to fund the project.

For now, though, Highway 105 will have to continue on the same road until the money comes through.