Expressway planned for 2010

Construction of an expressway to improve traffic flow in southeast Colorado Springs and provide access to the city’s airport is expected to begin in 2010.

The plan, unveiled at an open house Wednesday night, envisions shifting traffic off now-busy Drennan Road from Powers to Academy boulevards and moving it slightly south to a landscaped, four-lane expressway with limited access. Drennan would then be converted to a residential street.

The expressway plan presented to about 100 people at Soaring Eagles Elementary School is the synthesis of various alternatives and the culmination of planning that began in 1994 with the widening of Drennan Road.

The expressway would be designed to shuttle growing traffic west and east from new subdivisions in the south end of the city and speed Colorado Springs Airport traffic onto southbound Academy and then to Interstate 25.

The expressway would connect to the current Milton E. Proby Parkway that runs east from Powers into the airport and would also bear the name of the late reverend and civil rights champion.

The 55 mph expressway would have a grade-separated interchange at Academy but lights at Hancock Expressway and Powers. The city expects to fine tune the plan and acquire rights of way along the southern side of Drennan Road — a good chunk of it from Transit Mix — in 2008 and 2009. Only two homes would need to be acquired by the city to do the project.

Construction is expected to take two years, cost an estimated $50 million and will be funded by a 1 percent sales tax collected by the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority.

City planers say if traffic warrants it, the expressway could be expanded to six lanes and a separated interchange constructed at Hancock for an additional $30 million.

Most of those who attended the open house were residents of neighborhoods along Drennan Road. New and proposed subdivisions south of Drennan would be little affected by the parkway because entrances to that housing already has been limited. But the older neighborhood of Deerfield Hills, sandwiched between Drennan and Jet Wing Drive to the north, will feel some impact from the project.

Drennan would be converted to a residential street, with access to the parkway only at Hancock and access to Academy at Jet Wing.

Noel Franco, a homeowner in Deerfield Hills for nine years, said residents are concerned residents of the 1,200 or so homes in the subdivision will use one street in the subdivision, Colony Hills Circle, as a thoroughfare to Jet Wing.

“We have a lot of kids in the neighborhood, and people already speed down that road,” he said. Limiting access from the neighborhood, he added, “would really cause a lot of mayhem.”

Neighborhood residents are expected to meet with city planners in October to decide how they want to route a residential Drennan Road and what measures could be used to slow traffic.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com