Between all the parties involved, it’s taken 18 years and counting but progress continues on the Fourmile Creek Path underpass that will connect to the Cottonwood Trail.
This photo was taken from the Cottonwood Trail facing west and shows the span/bridge installed by BNSF but the underpass/box culvert is not yet built.
BNSF Railway installed the span in late November 2023. Boulder County subsequently completed some legal work and ditch coordination. Now, Boulder County is or will soon put the project out for advertisement. Once the contract is awarded, the contractor has to perform final coordination with BNSF and can start once that coordination is complete. In an ideal world, the box culvert/underpass could be done this spring.
18 years is a long time and it would be fair to criticize the project as emblematic of how slow and difficult infrastructure projects can be. Alternatively, Boulder County government continues to evidence how serious it is about incrementally building out a network of multi-modal (diversified right-of-way) choices.
This one is especially nice because it links city and county paths and trails that are “low-stress” or separated from roads. That is, it provides choices for riding that are safe.
C4C offered $5000 to attempt to incentivize a nearly $2,000,000 grant to complete the nearby and linked LoBo Trail section. That grant was wait-listed and effectively denied. Subsequently, Boulder County has told C4C that they intend to examine alternative ways to fund the construction of the missing segment of the LoBo Trail. All in all, this is typical of how things get done, in little bits.
A great resource to understand all this and see the bicycle level of stress of various routes is the Boulder County Cycling Map.
