Noise Barriers Needed, Say Residents Concerned About C-470 Expansion
LONE TREE, Colo. (CBS4) - "I would invite all of you who work for CDOT to come have drinks with us on our patio some evening and enjoy what should be a peaceful and quiet evening."
Those were the words of a Douglas County resident at a Wednesday night meeting called by the Colorado Department of Transportation to discuss the plan to expand C-470.
Like many at the meeting who shared public comments, the resident of the Gleneagles neighborhood said she's upset with the $269 million plan.
CDOT's expansion plan includes adding extra lanes and an express lane from Interstate 25 to Kipling Street. That's not the problem, though. The issue that's upsetting residents is a 2006 plan to add noise barriers from South Quebec Street to South University Boulevard has been scrapped after new tests showed they were no longer needed.
Neighbors including Carter Sales dispute that. Sales is the president of a Highlands Ranch neighborhood coalition whose group hired an independent noise auditor and found noise levels significantly higher than CDOT's prediction. They want the noise barriers from the 2006 plan back in the picture.
"So I'd love to play on a team where you can change the rules to suit yourself anytime," another upset resident said at the meeting.
CDOT says they stand by their research, but are willing to talk to the auditor the neighborhood group hired. They said they will present the questions and issues from Wednesday's meeting with the Federal Highway Administration, which will have the final say on the expansion plan. They expect to have a response on how things will proceed in November.
Construction work on the expansion work on C-470 is slated to start sometime in 2016.
