By JEFF CLEMETSON | Mission Times Courier

A long-awaited project to ease traffic congestion and flooding issues in Grantville is making progress.

On Feb. 12, representatives from the city’s planning department and Dokken Engineering presented to the Navajo Community Planners (NCPI) an update to the plan to realign Alvarado Canyon Road.

Mark Tarrell, a project manager for Dokken Engineering, said the project to address traffic issues at the Alvarado Canyon to Mission Gorge Road connection as well as flooding at the triple box culvert under Fairmont Avenue is currently in the scoping phase.

“So we’re not tasked to have a preferred alternative during this phase, but rather identify a range of alternatives to be studied,” he said.

Darwin Cruz, a senior engineer at Dokken, presented four alternatives currently being studied.

The first alternative is a “no build” alternative which would maintain the existing road network around Mission Gorge Road, Alvarado Canyon Road and Fairmont Avenue, although he said that this alternative is only being studied to use as a baseline for how the other alternatives would perform at improving traffic and flooding issues.

The other three alternatives would all address flooding by replacing the existing triple-box culvert under Fairmont Avenue with a 15- by 8-foot culvert that would allow more water to flow. All the build out plans also and include improvements to sidewalks and bike lanes.

In the “cul-de-sac alternative,” the existing connection between Alvarado Canyon Road and the west-bound I-8 offramp would be eliminated by building a cul-de-sac where drivers currently can make an immediate right onto Alvarado Canyon Road. This plan would also include widening Fairmont Avenue from four lanes to six lanes and also widen Mission Gorge Place at the approach to Mission Gorge Road to accommodate rerouted traffic that would occur with the cul-de-sac in place, Cruz said.

The “realignment alternative” would realign Alvarado Canyon Road to the Mission Gorge Road and Fairmont Avenue intersection. This plan would also include widening Fairmont Avenue to six lanes and also widen the Fairmont north segment adjacent to Home Depot.

“One of the key features for this alternative is the new bridge that would be required to cross Alvarado Creek and that would support the realigned street,” Cruz said. He added that one of the challenges for this plan is that the bridge and realigned road would require “right of way” impacts on private properties in the area.

The third build out plan is the “connector road alternative,” which proposes a new roadway connection between Alvarado Canyon Road and Mission Gorge Place in combination with building the cul-de-sac at the end of Alvarado Canyon Road. Cruz said this plan addresses potential impacts to Grantville Station as well as commercial businesses and properties. The plan also widens Fairmont to six lanes, and in addition would also widen Mission Gorge Road up to Mission Gorge Place. This plan would also require “significant” right of way impacts in the area. A bridge would also be built to cross Alvarado Creek.

In answering questions by the NCPI board, the Dokken team said the proposed plans won’t impact existing plans to build housing at the Grantville Trolley Station and would also adhere to the Alvarado Creek Revitalization Study which addresses flooding near the trolley station and is seen as an important step in opening the Grantville area up to major housing developments.

“We have two issues, which are traffic and drainage, so the more it’s coordinated I think it is going to be better for the entire area,” said NCPI board member John LaRaia. “And you understand the focus of this is the state has pushed as much density to the urban core and around a trolley station as we can get, so the better this is done and the faster this is done the better it is for the city as a whole.”

Tarrall said that Dokken and the city is on track to complete the scoping phase and have a completed study report for all the alternatives by this summer.

— Reach editor Jeff Clemetson at [email protected].