Centennial – Mayor Randy Pye dreams of East Arapahoe Road looking more like an improved Centennial main street than a worsening traffic nightmare.
While he’ll receive some ideas about changes from a $100,000 corridor study to be presented Thursday, the bigger question is cost.
“I have to be honest: I have no earthly idea where we would get the money to pay for something like that,” he said.
The price to fix the problem could exceed $100 million if the work started right away, but with no financing from state and federal sources in hand, traffic relief could be a long way off.
The 6-year-old city of Centennial depends on businesses that line East Arapahoe, where up to 66,000 vehicles travel daily between Interstate 25 and South Parker Road.
But as bumper-to-bumper traffic grinds to a halt daily at a handful of intersections, Pye fears that a maze of side roads and interchanges may be the solution, and that’s bad for the dozens of businesses that would fall off the direct path of the city’s premier route.
Pye likens such a solution to a corridor such as bustling South Santa Fe Drive north of West Belleview Avenue, with its limited exits and confusing access roads.
“There’s nothing friendly about Santa Fe,” he said.
Pye said Centennial should not alone foot the bill for the improvements on East Arapahoe, because it is a regionally used route.
Centennial and Greenwood Village joined with Arapahoe County and the Colorado Department of Transportation to pay for the study, which was begun in November 2005.
In addition to road improvements, the study makes recommendations on mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
Herman Stockinger, legislative liaison for CDOT, said the divide between initial road studies and construction can be many years apart.
“Now we’ve got a study on the shelf for Arapahoe Road, and someday when the money becomes available, we can pull it down and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a plan in place for Arapahoe Road,”‘ he said.
First, however, the corridor study will have to find a place as part of a regional transportation plan, he said.
Improvements can’t come fast enough for commuters such as Landon Garvey, who drives East Arapahoe daily.
“You can sit through four lights trying to get through some afternoons,” he said of backups, as he got gas at a service station near the bustling route. “If they don’t fix it soon, this area will get a bad reputation.”
Thursday’s open house and study presentation will take place at the Arapahoe Library District Support Services Building, 12855 E. Adam Aircraft Circle.
The open house is from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., with the presentation at 6 p.m.
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
