Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Littleton staff report HSIP intersection concepts for Broadway; consultant cost estimates outpace initial grant expectations
Loading...
Summary
City staff and consultants briefed the Transportation Mobility Board on safety concepts for two Broadway intersections and warned that consultant cost estimates far exceed the original grant assumptions.
City staff and consultants presented design concepts and a funding update for two Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) projects at Broadway & Littleton and Broadway & Mineral.
Aaron (city staff) and Shane (city staff) said both intersections have documented safety and operational problems that the HSIP funding is intended to address. At Broadway & Littleton staff highlighted a cluster of commercial access points immediately northwest of the intersection (including a Chipotle and a gas station) and said those closely spaced access points complicate turning movements and raise crash risk. Shane noted the intersection has had frequent passenger‑vehicle–transit vehicle conflicts; the project team is coordinating with RTD on stop locations and signal priority measures.
At Broadway & Mineral staff described queue‑spill and left‑turn storage problems: westbound left‑turn storage appears undersized and spillback can block through lanes, increasing crash risk when drivers attempt risky maneuvers to bypass queues. Staff proposed lengthening some turn storage lanes and reconfiguring lane geometry to reduce conflict points.
City staff described the grant and funding history: an earlier Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) request to fund a broad Broadway corridor study did not initially receive funding; the city later pursued HSIP funding for intersection safety work. When preliminary consultant concepts were prepared, the team found much higher costs than the early grant assumptions. "When we applied for this grant funding, we didn't have an idea of exactly what Broadway would be," a city presenter said. The consultant’s first concept estimates were roughly $10 million per intersection (about $20 million total); after scaling back the study team reported a refined concept estimate of about $14 million. Staff said earlier internal assumptions were “a little over a million dollars for each intersection” when the grant was sought.
Staff said the city has options: prioritize the most critical safety treatments for immediate construction, phase work across the two intersections, or reapply for additional CDOT funding while using design work to make future grant applications more competitive. CDOT staff (through program rules) has indicated additional HSIP awards are possible but are typically smaller than the example needed to fund the full concept packages. As one practical matter, staff said private development mitigation will contribute in part: the team reported a Costco development contribution in the range of $1 million to $1.5 million toward the Broadway intersections, but that amount would not cover concept costs.
Board members discussed tradeoffs between safety, multimodal access and neighborhood character. The presenters underscored that the corridor study’s broader vision — supporting walking, biking and transit — guided the intersection concepts but that the city must balance ideal designs with available funding and implementation staging. Staff said they will refine concepts, prepare 30% design where feasible, and pursue a combination of HSIP/TIP and other funding, with a goal of preliminary design in 2026 and possible construction in 2027 depending on funding.
