The future is now for transportation and mobility in Vail

The final version of Vail’s latest mobility and transportation master plan sets numerous recommendations to make it easier to get to and move around town over the next 20 years.

GoVail 2045 offers guidance on everything from the ambitious idea of tunneling Interstate 70 and adding new roundabouts to more modest improvements such as standardizing residential speed limits and improving transit opportunities and bike lanes. It replaces the town’s previous master plan from 2009, carrying on some of its ideas while bringing new ones to the table.

“As the town continues to thrive and evolve, it is crucial to develop a forward-thinking transportation strategy that aligns with Vail’s unique character and addresses the challenges associated with growth, sustainability, and accessibility,” reads the plan.

From start to finish, the process of creating the new master plan took around 18 months. The process included reviewing existing conditions, analyzing data, developing mobility concepts, taking public feedback, and creating the plan itself. In addition to engaging staff and community members, the town also hired contractor, Fehr & Peers, in 2022 with a $300,000 award to assist in the planning process.

Over a year and a half, the Town Council heard around 11 presentations on the plan that included community feedback as well as individual elements of the plan. Vail’s Planning and Environmental Commission also held various work sessions and public hearings before unanimously recommending it for approval at the end of June. The Town Council ultimately approved the plan’s final version at its first meeting in July.

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Now begins the decades-long process of taking this nearly 500-page document and figuring out which recommendations and projects make the most sense for the future of Vail.

“All the projects listed in this plan that are outcomes are certainly opportunities for the council to provide direction to staff to move forward,” said Tom Kassmel, Vail’s town engineer at the July 2 Town Council meeting. “Obviously a big piece to that would be to potentially budget for those items and I think you’ll see some items come through this fall.”

What the plan includes

The plan is split into seven main buckets targeted at the many ways people move in Vail. This includes transit, bicycles and pedestrians, parking, traffic calming, vehicular traffic, I-70, and transportation demand management. However, the plan also contemplates other areas including special events, its loading and delivery program, noise, technology and more.

“This plan endeavors to address the challenges and opportunities ahead, weaving together innovative strategies, community input and sustainable practices. It is a collective vision that reflects the aspirations of Vail’s residents, businesses, and visitors,” reads the plan’s introduction.

Under each of the seven buckets are specific goals, information about existing conditions, strategies to address concerns and recommendations for improvement. All of these are aimed at keeping what is working, fixing what isn’t and making improvements as mobility and transit evolve.

Through the public engagement process, the town identified that its four most successful elements were the ease and comfortability of walking and biking, the maintenance of trails and sidewalks, the ease, frequency and (free) cost of town buses, and navigability of Vail via car.

However, its primary challenges are also connected to some of these topics as well. It identified conflicts between pedestrians and bikes, finding parking and passenger loading, greater frequency of regional buses and traffic congestion as the top issues from community members.

Getting to work on the plan’s projects

In total, the plan identifies just over 100 potential capital projects — all of which are prioritized based on “feasibility for swift implementation and demonstrated need.”

There are five levels of priority for these projects as well as identified timelines (short, mid and long term) and estimated costs.

The highest priority of projects is those that can be immediately implemented. Thirty percent of the projects fall within that range. They include a bicycle and pedestrian counting program, creating a traffic calming policy, setting residential speed limits to 20 mph, hiring an active transportation coordinator as well as expanding the Vail Transportation Center. The latter project is one of the most costly (estimated to be greater than $10 million) short-term projects identified in the plan as the town currently has grant funding for the next two years.

The next priority includes 20% of the plan’s projects which need to be evaluated first before they can be implemented. This includes adding staging areas for special events with their new parking, a Vail Transportation Center and Vail Valley Drive roundabout, incentivizing carpooling, reviewing parking fines and creating an all-day East Vail express bus, year-round.

The next 20% of projects are those that need to be evaluated further to decide whether they are worth implementing or not. This includes ideas like creating a mobility pass (connecting resources for parking, transit, bike share and more) in coordination with Core Transit, the new valleywide transit authority, and CDOT, implementing angled parking at Ford Park and creating an interchange underpass in East Vail.

The fourth priority bucket includes items that would be “nice to have,” representing only 6% of the plan’s projects. Some of these include considering piloting a SMART city technology program, rolling out paid parking on the frontage road and more.

The final priority is 24% of the project, all of which have some sort of “trigger” before they can be implemented. These triggers can include things like the required development of another project first, a need to secure funding or more.

Some of these projects include adding things like lighting and sidewalks to improve the safety of frontage road parking, adding two northbound lanes on the Main Vail roundabouts, adding new roundabouts across town, several I-70 underpasses and overpasses as well as expanding its e-courier program to trash and recycling.

Many of the project types — such as adding new bike lanes, creating separated multi-use paths, adding road diets, striping residential shoulders and more — vary in priority and cost based on the location.

For example, while adding new 5-foot bike lanes at Vail Valley Drive and along Vail Road are identified as a top priority and ready for implementation, others still require studying (at West and East Lionshead Circle) as well as adding 6-foot Frontage Road bike lanes, something that has a trigger.

As another example, the plan identifies separated multi-use paths (including from the library to Lionshead along the nature trail and the Gore Valley Trail at Bighorn Road and the Lionshead Gondola) as places where it is ready to be implemented. However, certain locations — such as on the South Frontage Road along the Gore Creek and Vail Golf Course, or sections of the Gore Valley Tail along Vail Valley Drive — are considered costly and “nice to have.” Many other sections are identified as other priorities as well.

Even still, beyond the list of specific projects, GoVail 2045 identifies many other strategies, recommendations and opportunities that the town could pursue over the next two decades. For example, there are several pages in the plan dedicated to capping or tunneling I-70 — something that has been discussed in Vail since the 1970s. This does not show up on the project list but is something that the town could still pursue should the Town Council give it that direction.

“This is a 20-year plan, obviously it will have to be revised as needed, but this just gives us guidance into the future for transportation and mobility within the town of Vail,” Kassmel said.

To learn more or view the plan in its entirety, visit EngageVail.com/GoVail2045.