Boulder construction is mid and I have feedback
look, I know everyone’s complaining about construction but honestly? not enough. nowhere close. the cones-to-functional-road ratio in this town is embarrassing and somebody has to say it.
yes I see the cones. yes I see the flaggers. yes I see the corner of 23rd and Pearl, which has been a construction site since the Obama administration. cute. we can do better.
here is what I want:
-every hole gets a second hole. we don’t fill anything in until there’s a new one going next to it. by 2028 you shouldn’t be able to walk from Pearl to Ideal without crossing at least three trenches.
-the sidewalk program is too timid. we’re only ripping up sidewalks that are “old” or “cracked.” weak. start ripping up the sidewalks we JUST replaced. pour new concrete in a slightly different shade of gray. nobody will notice and that is the entire point.
-mapleton hill is getting repaved (yes I live there, yes I hear myself) and look, those roads are fine. objectively fine. but we’re committed now so honestly council should send a crew up at 2am to mess up the asphalt first so the project feels earned.
-shoutout to the Diagonal btw, the GOLD standard. $165 million and three plus years of lane closures so that someday we’ll have a beautiful nine mile bike path running right down the middle of a highway, with dedicated underpasses and everything, for the like four people who’ll actually commute it in january. this is the energy. this is what I want council doing more of.
-last thing. do NOT bury the power lines. I know. every chinook knocks our grid out for 18 hours. I know one downed line in the wrong canyon and we’re Marshall Fire 2. I know Fort Collins finished burying 100% of theirs in 2006 and basically never has outages. that’s exactly the problem. underground lines are invisible. they’re permanent. and worst of all they actually work. give me a sidewalk panel in a slightly different shade of gray instead.
the current strategy of repaving perfectly good roads so some 14 year old on a Super73 can hit 32 down Broadway is directionally correct. we just need to commit harder.