Larimer on the Move safety action plan seeks April adoption to pursue federal SS4A funding

Larimer County commissioners on Monday reviewed the draft Safety Action Plan prepared as part of the Larimer on the Move transportation effort and heard that staff aims to bring the plan back for adoption on April 14 so the county can pursue U.S. Department of Transportation Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) implementation or demonstration grants. The presentation, given by county staff and consultants from Felsburg, Holt & Ullevig (FHU), summarized public engagement, crash-data analysis, project prioritization and next steps.

The plan covers only county-owned, mainline roads in unincorporated Larimer County; Colorado Department of Transportation roadways are excluded. FHU project manager Jenny Young said the Safety Action Plan is “much more targeted and focused” than the broader transportation plan and that adoption in mid‑April would let the county seek SS4A funding whose Notice of Funding Opportunity was released the morning of the meeting. Young also noted the SS4A application deadline is June 26 and that SS4A requires certain elements, including leadership commitment, a data-driven safety analysis, public engagement and performance tracking.

Consultant project manager Gaurav and county staff described the analysis behind the plan: a High Injury Network (HIN) derived from crash severity and counts, and a complementary High Risk Network that maps contextual risk factors in rural corridors. Gaurav said the analysis showed about 15 percent of the county’s mainline roads account for roughly 81 percent of killed and severely injured (KSI) crashes, and the plan therefore targets those segments for the greatest safety benefit. The team said motorcycle and recreation-related crashes are overrepresented in severe outcomes in some recreation corridors such as Horsetooth Reservoir and the Estes Park area.

The draft plan groups recommended projects into short‑term (0–5 years), mid‑term (5–10 years) and long‑term (beyond 10 years) timeframes. Short-term items emphasize lower-cost or demonstration treatments — for example, striping, paint-and-post lane reallocation, temporary “quick build” treatments and other measures that can be funded by SS4A demonstration grants. Long-term items include infrastructure reconstruction such as roundabouts and system-wide policy updates. The plan also includes a prioritization spreadsheet weighted by safety impact, equity, multimodal access and public input; staff said that weighting can be adjusted if the county chooses to emphasize different criteria for particular funding sources.

Equity is embedded in the prioritization. The consultants described an equity index that aggregates census-based indicators (age, race/ethnicity, income, disability and other factors) and noted some high-risk or HIN corridors overlap with areas that score higher on the equity index. Staff clarified that federal designations and census polygons can produce high index values in sparsely populated or federally managed areas (for example, parts of Rocky Mountain National Park), but Larimer County does not maintain roads inside the national park and so no county projects are triggered there.

On enforcement and human-behavior countermeasures, presenters said safer speeds and education are essential components of a safe-systems approach. County traffic engineer Brian Frick and others noted the county has an established process for speed studies and is sharing crash and speed data with local law enforcement; the team also said it has been invited to a regional FHWA workshop to coordinate engineering and enforcement. The presenters said crash records can include helmet-use and passenger information for motorcycle crashes but that those fields are sometimes incomplete in police reports.

Staff showed a draft Power BI safety dashboard that would let users query crash trends by severity, location, time of day and other filters; the dashboard is intended for ongoing performance tracking paired with the county’s annual safety report. Funding avenues discussed included SS4A implementation/demonstration grants (match required), Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) grants (the county has used HSIP for guardrails in the past), and potential state-level proposals to fund vulnerable-road-user programs. Presenters emphasized that developing the plan now would make it easier to apply for multiple funding sources.

Commissioners asked about tourism’s contribution to crash patterns in recreation corridors, the treatment of motorcycle crashes (including helmet data and passenger information), how the equity index treats sparsely populated park-adjacent areas, and whether the transportation master plan will include higher-resolution cost estimates. Staff said the transportation master plan will include more detailed cost estimates and that a public and stakeholder review of the transportation draft is planned for May, with adoption of the transportation plan expected in June. The commissioners and staff agreed the safety plan will be brought forward for adoption on April 14 to enable near-term grant applications.

Next steps identified in the meeting: refine and finalize the Safety Action Plan for the April 14 adoption hearing, transfer the safety priorities into the transportation master plan, complete the public/stakeholder review of the transportation draft in May, and use the prioritized project list to pursue SS4A, HSIP and other funding opportunities.

Ending: The county’s safety action work is intended to be a living document that pairs a prioritized project list with performance tracking so the county can adapt implementation strategies over time. The board adjourned at about 11:57 a.m.