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Pitkin County officials lamented Tuesday that there are no easy answers on how to improve the safety of an intersection where there have been 18 accidents, including one fatality, over a five-year period ending in 2022.
County commissioners met with county engineer Andrew Knapp and public works director Brian Pettet to discuss a stance on the intersection of Highway 82 and Smith Way and potentially lobby the Colorado Department of Transportation for changes.
“This intersection historically has been viewed by CDOT and the county as needing upgrades,” Pettet said. “A while back, there was even a signal being contemplated by CDOT. That was proposed to the Board of County Commissioners at the time — none of them sitting right now — and at that time the county said we’re not interested in another signal on Highway 82, we don’t want to cause more delay.”
Reconsideration of a traffic signal was spurred by inquiries from the public and a county commissioner to the staff, according to a memo prepared by Pettet and Knapp.
The intersection experiences a significant amount of traffic because during the morning commute it’s used by some commuters as a way to “avoid the entrance (to Aspen) bottleneck conundrum,” Knapp said. Some Aspen-bound commuters turn off of Highway 82 and take Smith Way to get onto McLain Flats Road and enter Aspen “the back way.” In the afternoon, traffic leaving Smith Way encounters heavy traffic traveling downvalley on Highway 82.
There are an average of 24,000 vehicles per day on that section of Highway 82 and 3,400 vehicles per day exiting Smith Way onto the highway, according to Knapp.
He said an analysis of the crashes at the intersection from Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2022 show that 15 of 18 were during the day and 14 were in dry conditions.
“The intersection is experiencing more crashes than you would hope to see given the traffic volumes,” Knapp said. “I think it’s volume related.”
The most severe crash in recent years occurred in February 2018 when sports agent Dan Fegan, who represented several NBA stars, was killed when the SUV he was driving pulled out of Smith Way onto Highway 82 and was broadsided by a RFTA bus. Two passengers in Fegan’s SUV were injured. The driver and lone passenger on the bus were uninjured, according to reports at the time. The accident occurred at 9:22 a.m. on a Sunday.
The intersection was the location of a tragic accident in the late 1990s when two couples departed Woody Creek, attempted to get onto the highway and were struck by another vehicle. All four people were killed. That accident was well before the latest study.
Knapp said patterns suggest that most accidents occur when traffic volumes are high heading downvalley on Highway 82. A contributing factor could be drastically different speeds of vehicles on the highway and potentially frustration on the part of drivers trying to exit Smith Way.
“You have some people who are law-abiding drivers who like to drive the speed limit then you have everyone else,” Knapp said. “Everyone knows there’s a lot of fast driving on the corridor. The speed differentials make it difficult to appreciate how much of a gap you have.
“When you have a lot of vehicles and limited amounts of gaps available, people get impatient and they are willing to accept smaller gaps in order to try to make that crossing,” he continued.
Later in the discussion, Knapp said, “That might lead you to the logical question — why not place a traffic signal there? There’s not a clear-cut answer. Traffic signals often lead to more accidents at an intersection.”
One possible solution, possibly counter-intuitively, would be to increase the highway speed from 55 to 65 mph at that section in hopes that more traffic would go the expected speed limit, according to Knapp.
Commissioner Steve Child pushed back at that concept. He said many drivers treat the long, straight section of Highway 82 downvalley from the Brush Creek Road intersection as a “raceway.” Brush Creek is roughly a mile east of Smith Way.
“This is the beginning of what I call the NASCAR race,” Child said. “They are hitting 75 by the time they hit Smith Hill Way.”
He said he wants the speed limit to remain at 55 mph or lowered for the benefit of wildlife as well as people. “I think excessive speed is the reason there are accidents,” he said.
Knapp countered that an increased speed limit wouldn’t necessarily be a bad move. “It’s not letting people drive faster because people are driving faster already,” he said.
Knapp said Pitkin County Sheriff Michael Buglione has requested that CDOT perform a “speed study” on certain sections of Highway 82, including the Smith Way area. CDOT engineer Mark Bunnell told the commissioners that study should be completed by “late summer.”
Commissioner Greg Poschman asked if actions could be taken to calm traffic on that section of highway without adding a traffic signal. When no one could produce traffic calming ideas, Poschman asked if traffic volumes have reached the point where interchanges are needed at major intersections.
CDOT’s Bunnell offered an interesting perspective.
“I’ve always said that in my career in CDOT, there will be at least one interchange on Highway 82 somewhere between the south end of Glenwood and the north end of Aspen and maybe more than one,” he said. “This highway is getting to the point where there is so much volume that traffic lights are just not going to work in some situations. It’s coming (an interchange) but it’s going to be costly and painful. What do you really gain when you do one and you still have 30 intersections on that corridor?”
Knapp said the best solution might be law enforcement agencies issuing more tickets for speeding on Highway 82.