Studying transportation in Saratoga

The Town of Saratoga was awarded a state grant to pay for a study to determine what transportation improvements residents want.

“The Transportation Alternatives Master Plan study is an opportunity for staff, residents and the planning consultants to investigate opportunities to alter, increase and/or improve pedestrian connectivity and accessibility through the community,” said Public Works Director Emery Penner. “This is just a study.”

Last summer, the town hired Denver-based OV Consulting to do the study, Penner said. The grant money paid for the $200,000 study and the town contributed $20,000 as its share. These are “rough numbers.”

The consultants have been meeting with different community groups in an effort to gather input about what projects the residents want, he said. Additional meetings are planned.

The town is holding a public meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 17 at the Platte Valley Community Center at 210 W. Elm Street in Saratoga. The public is invited.

“It is a community feedback meeting,” he said.

“The walking path was studied and talked about in the town master plan in 2016 and also discussed by previous councils,” said Saratoga Mayor Chuck Davis.

Mayor Davis said these master plan improvements will “keep the town moving forward.”

Saratoga has “a couple areas” where it needs to “address safety and health for school students” and some issues “with sidewalks in our business district,” the mayor said.

“The biggest issue I see with building the walking paths is not only the cost of building them, but the cost of maintaining them,” he said.

At the meeting, the town will present the feedback it has gathered and ask for additional feedback from the residents who attend, Penner said. It will also present “in a broad sense the project ideas we have so far.”

He said bicycle access “came up lightly during the study, but there is not a huge emphasis right now on bike paths.”

A number of people have mentioned they have “some safety concerns with access” at Saratoga Middle/High School and its proximity to the Saratoga Elementary School, he said.

“The challenge is to get the children safely back-and-forth to the amenities, such as the sports field, the gymnasium, the recreation center and the library,” he said. “That whole corridor is used by various groups at various times.

“There is not a lot of vertical or horizontal separation where people walk and drive. There is room to make improvements there.”

“That item came up and seems to have a lot of support,” he said. “A lot of that is going to be based on the cost,” he said. This item has been identified as an issue and location for potential improvement.”

“The budget is very, very limited,” he said. “That’s what has drawn up a lot of debate.” The town knows it has to “bite the pie off in small areas realistically in the next 20 years.”

He said at the final input stage, the consultants will screen the projects down to a handful. Then they will do preliminary cost estimates on the projects.

The consultants will also provide information on potential funding sources for the projects, should they exist, he said.

“We got a lot of funding for this that did not come out of the town budget,” he said.

“This input we have gotten is very valuable, but the value doesn’t come from whether we do project A or project B--the value is in knowing what the people want,” he said.