Avon’s project to improve pedestrian safety on US Highway 6 breaks ground in July

Avon’s planned pedestrian safety improvements along U.S. Highway 6 will break ground in mid-July.

“We’re really excited to get this going,” said Eva Wilson, Avon’s engineering director, at the June 10 Avon Town Council meeting.

The project, which encompasses the 2-mile corridor from Post Boulevard to West Beaver Creek Boulevard, will mobilize on July 7. Construction will begin on Highway 6 around July 14.

What does the project include?

The planned improvements include a traffic signal at Stonebridge Drive, additional sidewalks, several landscaped median islands designed to slow traffic and four lighted pedestrian crossings. CDOT will also lower the speed limit to 35 miles per hour on the east side of Avon Road.

The pedestrian crossings will be placed at Mountain Stream Condominiums, Stonebridge Drive, Eagle Bend Apartments and River Edge Apartments, all high traffic areas with Core Transit bus stops on each side of the road. 

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While some of the corridor lies in unincorporated Eagle County, not Avon, the town decided to take on the entire project.

The project is expected to reach “substantial completion” in November 2025 and finish in March 2026, according to the June 10 Town Council meeting packet.

“Besides adding the pedestrian safety, also, I think aesthetically it’s going to be a real enhancement because we are looking at landscape strips, not just concrete curbs, for this,” said Eric Heil, Avon’s town manager. “It will be a very nice improvement for this stretch.”

The project is slated to cost $6.1 million. After the state made cuts to this year’s transportation budget, Avon lost some anticipated funding, but the Colorado Department of Transportation will still provide $4.6 million in grants. Avon has committed to contributing from its capital improvement projects budget, Eagle County committed $200,000, and Avon and Eagle County will split the cost of the remaining $1 million.

Avon’s ‘long lead item of the decade’

Avon has been working on making Highway 6 in and around town safer for pedestrians for over 10 years. The project is “our long lead item of the decade,” said Mayor Tamra Nottingham Underwood at the June 10 Town Council meeting.

“This is another long, long saga,” Heil said.

Highway 6 has long been recognized as dangerous for pedestrians. Several pedestrians have been injured or killed over the last 15 years. Most recently, a 76-year-old Pennsylvania man was killed in a hit-and-run while walking along Highway 6 between River Oaks Apartments and the EagleVail Shop & Hop in March 2024.

At a town hall in December 2023, Avon town engineers showed that the best way to improve pedestrian safety along a roadway is to lower the speed limit. A pedestrian hit by a car traveling at 30 miles per hour has a 60% chance of survival, according to the town staff’s presentation during that meeting. That same pedestrian’s chance of survival drops to 20% if the car is traveling at 40 miles per hour.

But CDOT, which has functional control over Highway 6, by policy does not change speed limits to affect driver behavior. Instead, CDOT will only change a speed limit if, during a speed study, it can be shown that 80% of drivers are driving a different speed than the posted limit.

The majority of the stretch of Highway 6 Avon wants to work on currently has a speed limit of 45 miles per hour. To lower that to 35 miles per hour, the town needed to find a way to get drivers to lower their speed.

The town’s initial improvement plan hinged on a roundabout at the intersection of Stonebridge Drive and Highway 6. But as the town wrapped up its design phase in spring 2021, CDOT pulled its approval of the roundabout.

In August 2024, Avon staff brought a new plan to the Town Council: Slow drivers using landscape medians and a stoplight at the intersection of Stonebridge Drive and Highway 6, and add pedestrian crossings at major Core Transit bus stops.

While the project could have proceeded with just the medians and crosswalks, after a debate, the Town Council unanimously voted to include the stoplight as well.

“There’s a value to the difference between a crosswalk light and an actual traffic light. I think drivers take a traffic light a little more seriously, if you will, and they’re a little more prepared than (at) what I perceive as crosswalk lights,” said then-Mayor Amy Phillips in August 2024.

CDOT ultimately agreed to reduce the speed limit on the east side of Avon Road to 35 miles per hour due to the traffic calming medians.

When construction begins in July, there may be traffic impacts on the stretch between Post Boulevard and West Beaver Creek Boulevard.

Because many of the improvements are concentrated in the median of Highway 6, the town aims to keep traffic moving in both directions along the road.

“Everywhere we can, we’ll push the traffic out from the middle and allow both directions of traffic to go,” Wilson said.

Avon “ask(s) the public to bear with us during the construction this summer,” Heil said.