Pueblo City Council narrowly approves new safety plans as report shows highest fatal crash rate in the state

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- The City of Pueblo is looking ahead to a new Comprehensive Safety Action Plan, which aims to enhance road safety. It comes as a city report reveals that Pueblo has the highest per capita rate of fatal crashes, and crashes in general, in the entire state of Colorado.

The proposed plan includes more than 190 infrastructure and operational improvements, totaling a cost of over $112 million.

Projects range from minor (like adding guardrails to certain streets) to major construction work (like adding a roundabout to 13th Street and Santa Fe Avenue).

The city is also considering adjusting the timing of signals across 51 locations in town.

The Comprehensive Safety Action Plan also outlines a "roundabout first policy," where future construction would aim to use roundabouts instead of traffic signals or stop signs. According to Pueblo's Comprehensive Safety Action Plan Report, roundabouts result in an 82% decrease in fatal or injury crashes compared to a two-way stop intersection. They also resulted in a 78% decrease in fatal or injury crashes compared to using a traffic signal.

But Andrew Hayes, Pueblo's public works director, said that the number of future roundabouts would be limited by available funding.

Additionally, there's the question of how long it will take to complete the list of projects, and where the money to pay for them will come from.

"There's no fixed timeline associated with the recommendations in the plan," Hayes explained. "What the plan does for us is it opens the door to federal funding opportunities and to state funding opportunities for safety grants. So, every year, we've been actually pretty successful in applying for and being awarded Highway Safety Improvement Program grants from CDOT."

He mentioned that this is the first in-depth study of its kind for Pueblo, with Pueblo County and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) participating as partners.

"Some of the intersections and corridors are in the city, some are in the county, and some are on highways in CDOT's jurisdiction," he said. "We also used real-time traffic data gathered from 15 intersections over a 24-hour period."

A consultant conducted the $800,000 study, with the city paying a fourth and the rest covered by a federally-funded CDOT grant.

However, the plan met with mixed reactions at Monday night's City Council meeting before narrowly passing by a 4-3 vote.

Councilwoman Regina Maestri was among the three members opposed.

"We usually do work sessions on comprehensive plans," she explained. "We didn't give it that opportunity. The people didn't get the right opportunity to understand it. I'm told that it will be posted publicly, so people can see it that way. I'm not sure why it wasn't presented in a work session first. That was their decision."

Maestri said that the Council will be closely watching how funds for the plan are spent, because individual expenditures will require Council approval.

To read the full report, click here.

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