Routt County has submitted a request to the Colorado Department of Transportation for $200,000 through the agency’s program to hire a consultant to explore potential designs to improve pedestrian safety at U.S. Highway 40 and Heritage Park.

Routt County Assistant Manager Melina Bricker provided an update on the application process through CDOT’s “Safe Routes to School” on Tuesday at a joint meeting between county commissioners and Steamboat Springs City Council members.

Bricker also said the county is researching grant opportunities through CDOT’s Multimodal Transportation and Mitigation Options Fund as part of an overall effort improve pedestrian safety for students and their families in the area, which hosts Sleeping Giant School and Steamboat Montessori School.

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Part of the application process for the Safe Routes to School requires a family survey to be collected with a 25% response rate.

Bricker reported the survey issued by the county to families with students at Sleeping Giant and Steamboat Montessori achieved more than a 50% response rate within six days. The two schools host a combined enrollment of 478, with 335 students at Sleeping Giant.

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“That alone indicates this is a significant issue for those families,” said Bricker.

“The vast majority of families in both of those schools believe the intersection between the two (schools) to be dangerous with many of the families using words like ‘fatal’ and talking about having significant fear over their kids crossing back and forth,” she added.

According to the results of the survey, most respondents, 53.5%, indicated students arrived by car at their school with 18.6% indicating students walked, 13.7% rode the bus and 12.4% rode a bike.

Forty percent of families said they lived more than 2 miles from their school while 60% of the respondents said they lived less than 2 miles from their school. Out of those who responded to the survey, 78% said their school commute time ranged from 5-20 minutes.

The survey also asked families if students had asked to walk or ride a bike to school: 56% reported “yes” but parents also provided varied responses on what age it would be appropriate to allow their child to do so; they also added qualitative information to their answers.

“I wouldn’t,” one respondent said. “The only way she can commute is on Highway 40 and it is completely unsafe.”

Another parent responded they would let their third grade student commute by walking or riding their bike, “if there was a safe highway crossing.”

Bricker also noted that while the Steamboat Springs School District encourages students to walk or ride their bikes to school, “it’s a little bit of an odd data point because on one hand they are encouraging an active commute, on the other hand they are saying, ‘please don’t cross that highway.'”

With respect to how students commute to Sleeping Giant, the district’s director of finance and operations, Stephanie Juneau, said the district does not recommend a walking or biking commute from Heritage Park.

“We would not recommend that; that is why we have bus service there,” Juneau said.

“On the other side, Silver Spur, those kids have walking paths to get to school if they want to walk,” she added.

Aside from meeting with the county last year over the matter of student commuting safety to Sleeping Giant, Juneau said the district had not been alerted to the pursuit of the Safety to School grant application.

“We participated in a meeting we were invited to last year about this topic, so we are certainly willing and happy to be at the table when those conversations happen and when we are invited,” she said.

County Commissioner Tim Redmond said Tuesday that he drives that section of U.S. 40 every day and has “been scared to death on a couple of occasions watching kids ride their bikes into town.”

“And the kids are fine,” he added. “It’s the commuters that are in a hurry and not paying attention, and somebody is going to die.”

Commissioner Sonja Macys added, “Someone is going to get seriously hurt if we can’t move quickly on this, and we have really been working with the Safe Crossings Committee, which is a group of the neighbors who have been pushing us hard to get this done.”

Bricker reported the county expected to receive a preliminary recommendation from CDOT on the grant application between February and March before a notice of award could be sent some time later in the spring.

Bricker said Tuesday that any support from the city as an extension of its partnership with the county on the city’s westward Core Trail extension project would be welcomed along with additional support from the Steamboat Springs School District Board of Education.

While the stretch of U.S. 40 in question is outside Steamboat city limits, council member Dakotah McGinlay said she and her colleagues see the issue of pedestrian safety in the area “as a really important issue.”

“We care about the safety of all the citizens and outside city limits, and I know that that spot has been a really dangerous spot for quite a while,” McGinlay said.