La Plata County's Road & Bridge Department spans vast distances across Marvel, Durango, Ignacio, and Bayfield, ensuring crucial infrastructure remains safe and reliable throughout the year. Managing over 650 miles of roads, including both gravel and asphalt, their efforts encompass everything from grading and snowplowing to long-term planning based on traffic and community needs. Despite budget limitations, their meticulous planning, informed by traffic patterns and community needs, ensures essential routes remain operational and safe. By Sadie Smith . This story is sponsored by Alpine Bank.
La Plata County - https://www.co.laplata.co.us
Road and Bridge Department - https://www.co.laplata.co.us/departments/road_and_bridge/index.php
Alpine Bank - https://www.alpinebank.com
Hi, I'm Eric Iker, employee, owner and president of Alpine Bank Durango. At Alpine Bank, we believe in the power of community and connecting you with the resources you need to work, live and play in our community. I hope you enjoy this edition of "Community Insights."
La Plata County's Road and Bridge Department's mandate is more than just asphalt and gravel. With districts covering 643 miles of county roads, including Marvel, Durango, Ignacio, and Bayfield, their dedicated efforts sustain crucial infrastructure, ensuring safe and reliable transportation year round.
About 431 of those are gravel, and that consists of four different districts. We have Marvel, Ignacio, Bayfield, and Durango, and they all have a certain amount of gravel roads that we grade and mag, as well as do asphalts. There's about 222 miles of asphalt roads that we take care of as well, including potholes and maintenance for those.
In addition to asphalt and grading, the Road and Bridge Department is responsible for sustaining all county-owned roads.
We do anything on the county roads that needs to be done. That includes magging and grading the roads, which is smoothing them out and using mag for dust control. And then we do, as I said, the asphalt potholes, take care of the shoulders, et cetera. And then we snowplow, which is a major part of our job during the winter.
When assessing which roads need maintenance, the Road and Bridge Department refers to a five-year plan that highlights which areas need to be prioritized with the resources they have.
We do have a five-year plan. A lot of that goes along with the traffic count, so how many trips are happening on each road every day. That changes as well. But there are roads such as 309, 309A that are near the airport that get hit really hard with a lot of speeders, which also damages the road faster. And so we go by those traffic counts, as well as mail routes, school bus routes, emergency access roads. We do prioritize those daily.
The Road and Bridge Department collaborates closely with engineers from the Public Works Department, while planning new road and bridge projects to strategically allocate limited funds.
We sit down together and we put our heads together on how to plan for the future and how to plan. As Recy said earlier, the five-year plan, we go through that together. I go through the road and bridge portion, they do the engineering portion, and we try to come together in agreement on what roads are the priority.
With road maintenance being highly expensive, the Road and Bridge Department has limited funding. While many roads could use improvement, the Road and Bridge Department has a policy restricting the acceptance of new roads because their budget has reached its limit.
We're doing the absolute best and the most efficient we can with the money that we have. There really just is not enough. And with the population increasing in the area, that increases trips on these roads, that increases damage, which makes our grading last a lot less.
To keep up to date with current and upcoming projects, visit the Road and Bridge Department's website. We're proud to present "Community Insights," powered by the Local News Network and sponsored by Alpine Bank. With "Community Insights," our mission is to foster a stronger and more connected community in La Plata County and beyond. For more information about this and other stories, visit durangolocal.news. Thank you for watching this edition of "Community Insights." I'm Sadie Smith.
