Durango's wish list for growth
How Durango – and other Western towns – can escape the gridlock grip

The above photo shows downtown Durango as seen from a Google Earth satellite in September 2019. And no, someone didn’t paint the streets yellow in real life; I colored them with photo-editing software. I started doing it for my own purposes. I wanted to see how much of the city’s commercial core was devoted to automobiles, highlighting those areas with yellow. I started with streets, then moved onto parking lots, then alleys. Every time I thought I was finished, I’d encounter another rectangle of asphalt.

Ugly, isn’t it? But it can also be a useful tool, one to keep on hand to whip out next time someone says there’s a parking shortage in Durango. There’s not. Obviously.

Durango’s not alone in dealing with this automobile-centric affliction. Many cities are far worse. Still, it’s one of many problems that need solving.

We’ve looked back at what Durango was, and what some of its leaders wanted it to be, and what it became. Now it’s time for us wannabe planners to envision the future we want – just like the planners of 1971 did. 

And the future the Land Desk Planning Commission desires is a Durango that is sustainable and livable for all. And not just environmental sustainability, but also human, economic and community sustainability. It’s our belief that Durango – and many communities in the West – are moving rapidly away from any semblance of this sort of sustainability. They increasingly are becoming traffic-jammed enclaves for the wealthy, vacationers and the upper echelons of the Zoom class, places that squeeze out teachers, firefighters, food service workers and all those who keep the gears of society grinding. 

It would be bad enough if the influx of wealth was accompanied by a corresponding uptick in the quality of life. But that is hardly the case. If Durango was “urban” a half century ago, shouldn’t it be more urban now? In the 1971 planning document, my father wrote: 

“The challenge we face is whether or not as a group of 12,000 we will let that change shape us or whether we will shape the change. … Durango is a series of communities: labor, education, retirement, agricultural, professional, service, youth, educated, uneducated, Chicano, Anglo, poor, middle income … and among many of these sub-communities there is almost no communication, no feelings of concern for the other. It is this fragmentation that makes us very much “urban” in the modern American sense. We are not a small town.”

Durango’s population has nearly doubled since then, and La Plata County’s shot up from 19,199 in 1970 (the same as in 1960) to 55,638 in 2020. I think it’s safe to say that Durango has progressed as a community in many ways, partly as a result of growth, partly thanks to good planning and leadership.

But over the last decade or so, the growth and wealth influx has continued at a rapid pace, while progress in other realms has slowed. Growth has not brought with it the trappings normally associated with urban places, be it robust public transportation, diversity, good jobs or more opportunities. The “series of communities” of 1971 have, if anything, diminished in number and diversity, while still remaining as fragmented as ever. Mobility, the ability to get from one place to another by car, bike or foot, is decreasing, and the roads are becoming more dangerous. The arts, culture and food scene isn’t exactly exploding with vibrance. The town can’t – or maybe won’t – sustain a daily print newspaper anymore, which has further diminished the community as a whole. 

I’m no urban planner. And I know that real planners – really smart ones – are working on these complex issues, none of which have easy solutions. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to do their jobs. In fact, everything I suggest here would fit within the objectives of Durango’s current comprehensive plan. This is just a wish list from someone who grew up in Durango and cares about what it becomes, someone who has been covering these issues for many years, and someone who has gleaned a few ideas from far-flung communities in which I’ve lived. I’m not anti-growth or anti-outsider, per se: When I was a teenager I yearned for a population-influx, because I figured it would make the place more interesting. What I didn’t understand is that making a place “interesting,” whatever that might mean, takes effort, not just more people. 

So with that great big caveat, here we go. I had intended to tackle all of the issues in just one dispatch, but soon realized there’s too much. So this post will focus on mobility.

When I was growing up in Durango, my parents weren’t really the types to drive me around, and even when they offered, I usually turned them down because I was embarrassed to be seen climbing out of one of our crappy old cars. But that was OK, because it was a fairly easy town to get around in on foot or by bike and even bus. The transit system in the ’80s was at least as robust as it is now, and there was even a town bus to Purgatory. You could ride a bike up and down Main Avenue without fearing for your life, and as a teen in the ’80s, I felt totally safe riding on the highways in and out of town. 

Since then, Durango has become famous as a nurturer of world-class cyclists, but at the same time cycling – and walking – have become more and more perilous (I pretty much gave up road riding because of multiple near-death encounters with car-driving a**holes). True, the best planning in the world won’t do anything about the a**holes, but good planning could ease traffic, and good infrastructure could better protect bikers and pedestrians from the a**holes. More than that, orienting the community toward human beings rather than automobiles – as it is now – will make life better for all the human beings, even the a**holes who wield their four-wheeled monstrosities like weapons in some fossil-fueled culture war. 

• Overhaul Main Avenue: Main Ave. is no longer a primary artery through town. So why does it still look like a highway? It has five lanes for cars (three for driving, two for parallel parking). Five lanes(!) for a road that really doesn’t need to have cars on it at all. But no, we’re not advocating for a pedestrian mall – those tend to gentrify. We’re simply calling for a “complete streets” makeover for downtown, which is to say it should be oriented toward humans, not cars. 

Cut Main Ave. down to two lanes for driving, widen the sidewalks and make the COVID-era bumpouts permanent, with cutouts for some diagonal parking. And put roundabouts at 6th, 9th and 12th Streets. If Grand Junction and Farmington can do it, then so can Durango.

Let’s also extend the concept to Second Ave., College Drive and beyond. 

• Integrate the Animas River Trail (ART) into the rest of the town: If the ART is Durango’s main-stem of human-centered mobility, then it is in dire need of tributaries that extend into the rest of the community. First priority is an overpass or underpass for Camino del Rio at 12th St, and another underpass/overpass at S. Camino del Rio and CR 210 (aka the road to Lake Nighthorse). Equally critical is extending the ART to Three Springs (and, eventually, Hermosa, Bayfield, Ignacio, Aztec and Farmington. And how about that branch that goes all the way up Junction Creek to the Colorado Trail trailhead?) 

• Revamp Animas View Drive/CR 203/HWY 550 intersection (i.e. the Iron Horse Intersection): This is an accident waiting to happen and effectively cuts off non-car-driving residents on CR 203 from getting to the Iron Horse to catch the bus or from joining up with the north end of the Animas River Trail. At the very least put in a traffic light, but a car/pedestrian overpass would be even better for safety and to preserve traffic flow.

• Overhaul CR 250/E. 32nd Street from Holly to Florida Road: Or at least put in some stinking bike lanes and sidewalks. Please? This is major linkage between north Durango and the growing Florida Road/East Animas zone and is perilous for walkers and bikers. 

• Public Transit, damnit! Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful for the Main Ave. trolley line and for the existing bus system. But it’s just not enough. The local transit system must be more robust, cover more area and run more often. And then it needs to be expanded into a regional system, extending to Purgatory and Farmington, Cortez, Bayfield, Ignacio and Silverton. It’s wonderful that you can now take a bus from Durango to Grand Junction, but it’s utter insanity that there is no similar bus to Albuquerque. And once that’s all in place, how about working with Farmington, Cortez and Pagosa Springs to create a truly regional airport? 

The Land Desk is a newsletter from Jonathan Thompson, longtime journalist and author of River of Lost Souls, Behind the Slickrock Curtain, and the newly released Sagebrush Empire. To subscribe, go to: www.landdesk.org