Durango residents push to make Animas View Drive safer
DURANGO, Colo. (KRQE) – After a deadly crash on a narrow and well-traveled Durango road, neighbors are calling on the city to act. Those neighbors brought in experts to try to make things safer. “Animas View Drive used to be the highway,” said Chuck Marohn, President and Founder of Strong Towns, an advocacy group.
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It’s been almost a year since 27-year-old Katie Siegrist was hit by a car at Animas View Drive. While walking her dog she later died from her injuries. Now residents are presenting potential solutions on this road to make it safer for all pedestrians and cyclists. “The old highway, the new Animas View Drive, it’s too highway-esque, it’s like over-engineered and overbuilt, to be a little sleepy residential street,” said Marohn.
The panel of residents and safety advocates presented their ideas during a virtual meeting and addressed problems like a lack of lighting, transit services, and walkways for pedestrians. “You’re giving the driver the impression that that space belongs to them,” said Anthony Cantania, Founder of AMC Architecture & Design, LLC.
That, experts say, leads drivers to speed. “Folks are driving, in some cases, more than ten miles an hour over the speed limit,” said Cantania.
The speed limit was changed from 35 to 25 miles-per-hour back in 2021, but they say this issue needs more drastic changes like what’s known as an “edge lane road,” prioritizing bike lanes and requiring cars in both directions to yield to one another. “The reality is, from a design standpoint, is actually very genius, because you are communicating to the driver through the placement of the shoulders and the striping and everything that they have to be on alert. And what that does is it slows people down,” said Marohn.
Residents say some kind of change is critical, as the area only gets busier. “The city extended a city-wide river trail to outlet, it’s 11-mile type trail pedestrian bike only, it outlets on Animas View Drive,” said Nancy Dosdall, Durango resident senior planner, and project manager.
The goal is to see fewer cars on the road altogether. “It is a redundant road. If you were heading north, it’s quicker, easier to stay on Highway 550,” said Dosdall
The group is planning further discussions to nail down which proposals to present to the city for consideration.
Following the death of Siegrist, the City of Durango focused on making improvements to the area. The city hosted two meetings in the last year to hear feedback from residents and said, “the City will continue to implement identified near-term improvements and are engaging the neighborhood and community for direction on mid-term improvement.”
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