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Letter: Elevate the bridge till 10th Street

Eric Olander
Glenwood Springs

It’s a lovely conceptual illustration of a pedestrian-friendly area under the bridge the Post Independent ran on its front page (1/8), showing a deceptive perspective for a space that would only be slightly larger than its present configuration. Yet don’t dismiss the image on face value. Rather imagine the concept presented as this under-bridge pedestrian park extending the length of the downtown core and thus giving all these businesses the same opportunity to troll for pedestrians as businesses along Seventh, via keeping the bridge elevated till it meets the crest of the hill on 10th Street.

CDOT is bent on keeping 82 running right up Grand Avenue because the past decades have proven this town will never agree on where to put a bypass long past when cars fly — which incidentally are here in prototype — and traffic flow becomes a problem for the FAA.

Keeping the bridge elevated will solve more problems like allowing cross traffic on 8th and 9th to move unmolested underneath the span. No downtown core pedestrian crossings and the smooth flow of traffic through until the 10th Street light, where access to the downtown parking garage was designed to come from. Allow for covered diagonal parking spaces on both sides of those streets under the structure, when larger activities aren’t using the space. The space could be used for building floats building prior to the parade or Messiah Under the Bridge and other grand concerts created to recoup the tourist dollars lost during construction. Creating a grand pedestrian area large enough for many uses such as festivals, farmers markets and many things the imaginative dare to imagine.



And if CDOT wants to get innovative — on the advent of traffic lanes in the sky — it can finance the longer bridge on venture capital and research dollars by making it a competition to invent reusable, modular bridge segments able to be deployed elsewhere when we are either flying or can finally reach consensus on where to place a bypass.


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