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How much control does Breckenridge have over traffic? It’s limited, but officials are reviewing their available tools.

Breckenridge is pictured March 22, 2024. Local officials learned about what the town can and can't when it comes to traffic calming efforts in Breckenridge at the Oct. 22, 2024 Town Council meeting. Recently residents have been reporting traffic and poor parking practices amid leaf peeping season in and near town.
Kit Geary/Summit Daily News

As Breckenridge remains a popular year-round tourism destination, especially for day-visitors driving up from the Front Rage, it finds itself susceptible to heavy traffic.

In light of recent traffic complaints from residents, town staff members outlined, during a meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 22, the types of traffic calming techniques it has control over. Traffic calming techniques are efforts that aim to increase safety and reduce the number of accidents.

Breckenridge first created a traffic calming policy over 20 years ago. It set perimeters for how traffic calming requests could be made, and the policy created a protocol for how the town collects data to analyze an area that’s receiving complaints.  



Town engineer Shannon Smith said recent traffic complaints on Floradora Drive prompted staffers to educate officials and the public on the traffic calming policy and the constraints the town faces when it mitigates concerns.

Towns across Colorado grappled with issues related to speeding in 2023. That year, the state issued a record number of citations to people speeding in construction and school zones. Colorado also saw a record number of pedestrian fatalities in 2023.



Smith said the town gets a lot of traffic calming requests. She said whether or not the town can effectively influence people’s driving speeds comes down to the initial design of the roadway. The town has therefore been pushing housing developers to be mindful when designing roads and urging them to focus on how to dictate an appropriate speed limit from the jump to avoid problems later down the line.

There are also limitations within the town’s policy, such as restrictions on placing too many speed-slowing mechanisms on priority plow routes or transit routes, that dictate what the town can do to calm traffic in certain areas. 

When it comes to speed-slowing mechanisms, council member Steve Gerard said he thought speed bumps were a bad idea in high-Alpine environments where services like snow plowing are frequently needed. 

“I’ve always believed that stop signs calm more traffic than anything else,” he said. 

Smith said due to strict parameters around stop signs, the town can’t just throw them up anywhere. He also highlighted that their effectiveness goes back to the design of a road. 

“We just can’t throw a stop sign on Park Avenue because we wish cars would slow down,” she said, noting busy roads would have to have had adequate loading room programmed into them when it was first designed to accommodate stop signs.  

Smith said introducing new stop signs to areas that previously didn’t have them can have adverse effects. 

“You can’t put a stop sign at an intersection that doesn’t have the right parameters for traffic loading. It won’t be expected by the driver. Therefore the driver won’t be anticipating to stop, and you actually create a more dangerous situation,” she said. 

Smith said public sentiment on how traffic should be dealt with is split, particularly when it comes to the topic of speed bumps. She pointed to the speed bumps put on Royal Tiger Road as a recent example of a traffic calming effort that had a mixed response from residents, some opposing and some supporting. 

Per the town’s policy, traffic calming devices such as these can be removed through a neighborhood petitioning for it. 

Another consideration taken into account in the policy is how traffic calming devices impact emergency response from local jurisdictions such as the police and fire departments. The policy said “physical changes should not grossly affect the response time of emergency vehicles on primary routes.”

Traffic calming concerns and requests can be brought to the town’s engineering department, police department, public works department or elected officials.


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