Council weighs truck-route changes and traffic safety after Public Works report on 90 Sixth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard

Public Works briefed the City Council on existing truck routes, tipping fees and the traffic implications of rerouting trucks from two corridors — East 90th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard — prompting extended council discussion about safety, enforcement, and mitigation measures.

Jenna Hahn, public works director, told the council that the city’s truck routes were adopted by ordinance in 1987 and that changing those routes would require another ordinance. “Our truck routes were adopted by an ordinance passed by city council in 1987,” Hahn said. She outlined engineering criteria used to set truck routes, including public safety, pavement structure, traffic flow, accessibility to industrial areas and highway connections.

Hahn said tipping fees (charges levied by waste processing facilities) are not set by local truck routing and therefore do not change automatically when routes change. She presented truck counts and modeling for East 90th Avenue and intersections affected by a potential reroute: - East 90th Avenue: approximately 1,170 heavy trucks per day; total vehicles around 14,000 per day. - Colorado Boulevard: staff estimate about 1,300 daily trucks (data level for Colorado was less detailed than for 90th).

Hahn told council that rerouting 90th Avenue truck volumes onto alternatives such as East 104th Avenue would create…