Logan County’s commissioners expressed frustration Tuesday, July 9, with the lack of progress on bringing state highways in rural Colorado up to snuff.
During the board’s work session Tuesday morning, Commissioner Byron Pelton said he’d attended a meeting of commissioners from the eastern Transportation Planning Region and Colorado Department of Transportation officials Monday, July 8; he said he’s not sure CDOT understands the challenges eastern Colorado faces.
Logan County is in TPR No. 8 along with Crowley, Elbert, Kit Carson, Lincoln, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington and Yuma counties.
Pelton said the list of project priorities for the TPR include few of the high-priority projects identified by commissioners from the nine counties and only Sterling’s “S-Curve” from Logan County.
“All of the state roads in Logan County need attention,” Pelton said. He listed U.S. 138 from Sterling to Colorado 113, U.S. 6 south to Merino, Colorado 61 from Sterling to Logan County Road 22 and virtually all of Colorado 14 west of Pawnee Pass.
“We are an (agricultural) county, our TPR has six of the top 10 ag counties in Colorado, and those roads see a lot of hard use,” he said.Commissioner Jane Bauder said it sounded like the same conversation that occurred when she met with CDOT officials last week.
“We tried to tell (CDOT) that we may not have the traffic and the population (of the metropolitan areas) but the traffic we do have is so much heavier, and so much harder on our roads,” she said.
Pelton said he thought some CDOT representatives were beginning to understand that it isn’t shipping traffic; it’s normal agricultural traffic that tears up roads in rural areas.
“It’s farm trucks,” he said. “Cattle trucks, belly-dumps, sugar beet haulers – that’s what we have out here and our roads take a pounding. All of the commissioners in that meeting hammered that home yesterday.”
In other business Tuesday morning the commissioners heard reports from Darlene Carpio, field representative for U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, and Dusty Johnson, field representative for Congressman Ken Buck.
Carpio said Gardner is pressing to have standardized maps of broadband service produced so lawmakers know what areas of rural America are adequately covered and which are not. She said all broadband carriers have maps of their coverage areas, but Gardner wants a standard map so Washington can easily see where the gaps are and direct funding to those areas.
She said the senator also is heavily involved in the Veterans Administration Readiness Initiative, particularly the portion that helps veterans transition from military to civilian life.
Johnson pointed out that Rep. Buck was instrumental in getting transportation funding for a master plan for Sterling Municipal Airport. She read a message from Buck that said, in part, “Air travel is essential to our way of life on the eastern plains, but in order for Colorado to support our state’s growing travel and tourism economy, we need to conduct critical maintenance to our airports.”
The planning grant for Sterling is $290,683, Johnson said.