Southwest Drive in east Cheyenne is pictured Tuesday afternoon. The Southwest Drive Corridor Plan would terminate the road at either end, and provide road and sidewalk improvements.
Southwest Drive in east Cheyenne is pictured Tuesday afternoon. The Southwest Drive Corridor Plan would terminate the road at either end, and provide road and sidewalk improvements.
CHEYENNE — In April, the Cheyenne Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) presented an early planning study to adjust traffic flow along Southwest Drive — a road that parallels Interstate 25 between Lincolnway and College Drive.
But nearby residents are concerned the development isn’t the proper solution, and say it will waste millions of taxpayer dollars.
If realized, the plan would terminate Southwest Drive just north of College Drive and just south of the Interstate 80 overpass while developing a dirt road 635 feet to the east, Broken Arrow Road, to act as the new major collector for traffic.
“It’s the total impracticality of what they’re talking about doing,” nearby resident Fred Schlachter said of the potential developments.
However, the planning study has a long way to go before it would be realized. MPO Director Jeff Noffsinger said the developments currently have no funding, and this is a study of what the MPO recognizes as the best traffic solution to support potential development in the area in the next 10 to 25 years.
The recommended improvements to the area according to the MPO's Southwest Drive Corridor Plan.
A 90-acre plot of land adjacent to the east side of Broken Arrow Road, about 1,200 feet north of College Drive, is owned by Garrett Properties, a property management company, and is listed as vacant residential land on the Laramie County Assessor’s website.
While there have been no applications for development on that property, Noffsinger said his office has prepared these plans as a potential option if development were to increase vehicle traffic in the area.
“Based on all the research and all the analysis that we’ve done on this project, this is the optimal solution for the future,” Noffsinger said. “Again, the future could be 10 to 25 years, unless development precedes that.”
The plan would address traffic at the intersection of Southwest Drive and College Drive, which the MPO says is burdened by traffic due to its proximity to the interstate, and develop an alternate route to connect to Lincolnway, rather than through Southwest Drive, which is blocked by train traffic one-third of the time, according to a study from the MPO.
The connection to Lincolnway would develop Swan Ranch Road, which sits on the southern border of the Cheyenne Animal Shelter, from Southwest Drive to Parsley Boulevard via Broken Arrow Road. Parsley Boulevard would allow connection to the Ames Avenue underpass, avoiding rail traffic.
George Obssuth, a resident of Southwest Drive, said he doesn’t believe this is an optimal solution. To him, it would be cheaper and more efficient to create an underpass or overpass at the intersection of Southwest Drive and Lincolnway to bypass rail traffic.
Noffsinger said that the intersection is too narrow to develop an efficient underpass, and an overpass would require expensive construction and land acquisition and cost between $30 million and $50 million. Additionally, it does not address his concerns with potential traffic increases at the intersection of Southwest and College drives.
“We’re just planning in advance so if that [development] does happen, the Broken Arrow corridor would probably require signalization at College Drive, which would basically make College Drive function more efficiently, rather than having multiple lights at Southwest Drive and Broken Arrow Road,” Noffsinger said. “It’s just going to function much better.”
Obbsuth and Schlachter also expressed concern over cost. The initial MPO planning study estimated the updates would cost around $13 million. With inflation, Obbsuth estimated that may be closer to $20 million by the time of development.
Noffsinger said that if the plan were to be realized, funds would largely come from the private developers seeking better access to their property.
“They already have legal access, but they would need to improve the access,” he said. “So, a lot of the contribution will be coming from the developer.”
Noffsinger cited a few other documents that support the development of Broken Arrow Road, including Connect 2045 (a long-range transportation plan) and a 2023 WYDOT study.
A potential shift from Southwest Drive to Broken Arrow Road as a major collector road would also create the possibility to connect to and support traffic from the COSMO project to the southeast. This would require Broken Arrow Road to extend farther south, pass over the railroad and connect with Wallick Road, a county road on the COSMO project’s northern border. COSMO is a large-scale data center project; the company developing it has so far not been identified publicly.
Obbsuth and Schlachter questioned the true intentions of the potential development, saying that, if realized, they would see it as the city putting potential developers and data centers over the concerns of existing residents. Noffsinger said there is no pressing need to pursue this development in the near-term.
Next week, the plan will come before the Cheyenne Planning Commission for approval and will then seek certification from the City Council, if approved. The MPO will do the same for Laramie County, bringing it before the county planning commission and county commissioners.
If approved on both levels, it will be up to governmental entities to decide if they want to move forward with design and then construction of the project.
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Noah Zahn is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s local government/business reporter. He can be reached at 307-633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews.com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.
