The Boulder County commissioners, at a Tuesday work session, supported a plan to continue working on the design of two large regional trail projects, even as the county is still figuring out how to pay to build them.
One project is the North Foothills Bikeway, which would add a separated bikeway along a dangerous section of U.S. 36/North Foothills Highway between Boulder and Lyons. The 11-mile corridor currently has the highest number of cyclist crashes in unincorporated Boulder County.
The other project is the Boulder to Erie Regional Trail, dubbed BERT. The trail would be about 8.5 miles long, beginning at 61st Street in Boulder and ending at County Line Road in Erie. The plan is to convert a portion of the former Union Pacific rail corridor, now owned by RTD, into an accessible trail. The recommended trail alignment would cross the rail bed as needed and lie just off the railroad tracks.
The county has used revenue from its 2022 Transportation Sales Tax to pay for engineering, environmental review, public engagement, agency coordination and permitting activities for both projects.
But with project costs continuing to increase, current estimates show that more than $120 million in additional funding will be needed to complete design and construction of the two regional trails. County staff members said a combination of federal, state, regional, local and partner funding will be needed.
The county’s strategy, Strategic Projects Manager Stacey Proctor said, is “let’s design it and advance it as much as we can so we’re ready to go when we get the money.”
The commissioners on Tuesday agreed they want to continue moving the projects forward but won’t make formal funding decisions, including how to allocate the transportation tax revenue, until the fall as part of the budget process.
The 2027 amount requested to keep the North Foothills Bikeway on track for construction in 2029 is $2.5 million.
This year, the project team plans to complete the preliminary design for the first segment, from Broadway to Neva Road, and begin preliminary design of the second segment, from Neva Road to Lefthand Canyon Drive, with a focus on the Lefthand Canyon Drive crossing.
Boulder County staff members are also coordinating the design with the team working on the wildlife crossing project, which is also in the planning stage. For that project, the county is working with the Colorado Department of Transportation as it considers six possible wildlife crossing locations along U.S. 36 between Boulder and Lyons.
Both project teams, according to county staff members, are aware that concerns about impact to driveways on U.S. 36 could be a major issue for the two projects and are “strategizing on landowner engagement to address the concerns.”
For the Boulder to Erie Regional Trail, the 2027 amount requested to keep the project on track for 2029 construction is $1.6 million, which would be combined with $515,135 from a recently awarded grant.
This year, the project team plans to consolidate environmental data, document anticipated impacts and develop mitigation and minimization strategies where the trail passes through a raptor habitat. The project team is also developing design criteria and will begin working on initial trail alignment and layout.