Aurora is closing in on completion of the Triple Creek Greenway, a 27-mile trail that will allow commuters to travel uninterrupted between Aurora Reservoir to where the South Platte River runs through Denver.
With a $2,025,000 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado, the City of Aurora will purchase 388 acres to expand the future trail as it heads under E-470 along Coal Creek towards the Aurora Reservoir.
“The goal is to get a trail corridor that runs as close to the creek as we can make it,” said Pat Schuler, manager of Open Space & Natural Resources for the city.
According to city documents, the trail has been completed as it runs along Sand Creek and connects with the High Line Canal Trail at Star K Ranch. The existing trail stops just before Picadilly Road near Buckley Air Force Base. Schuler said the city so far has purchased 2.8 miles of property to extend the High Line Canal trail to E-470.
The portion of the proposed trail that has not been completed continues southeast and crosses under E-470, where it will travel through a number of planned residential neighborhoods before heading south along Senac Creek. Eventually, the trail will connect to the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds and Regional Park, Reservoir Community Park, various open space parcels and natural areas owned by Aurora, and finally terminate at the Aurora Reservoir, which is adjacent to 26,000 acres of relatively natural prairie grassland owned by the State Land Board.
City officials say the Triple Creek project will encourage healthy lifestyles and provide better opportunities for Aurora’s residents to access trails.
“I often get complaints from bike riders that live along Gun Club Road because of the lack of safe bike routes into the core areas of Aurora and further west,” said Tom Tobiassen, Regional Transportation District board member, whose district encompasses Aurora.
He said bike routes near E-470 are narrow, high-speed and extremely dangerous for cyclists.
“Commercial trucks going to and from the landfill at Gun Club make up a lot of the traffic, and it’s scary for everyone including bike riders and car drivers,” he said. “Having this trail will allow bicycle riders to get off of those roads and take a more serene route into Aurora and on to downtown Denver. This trail will lay the foundation for an extension of the regional bike-way system that will connect neighborhoods in the east along the E-470 Corridor with the rest of the bike-way network.”
According to data from the Colorado Department of Transportation, about 17,000 vehicles a day travel through the intersection of Gun Club and East Jewell Avenue, The intersection of Jewell and Gun Club is about two miles north of the entrance to the landfill. Trucks account for around 5 percent of that traffic, according to CDOT.
Schuler said the city has not set a timeline for when the 27-mile trail will be completed.
“It’s moving faster than we anticipated, but we still have a ways to go,” she said.
The Trust for Public Land and Arapahoe County Open Spaces have partnered with Aurora on this effort since the Triple Creek project’s inception in 2009.