The Built Environment Coalition created this past spring aims to raise awareness across Routt County to ask everyone to put themselves in others’ walking shoes or wheels.

The goal of the community coalition, which is a project of Routt County Public Health Department, is to make sure everyone has easily useable walking, biking or rolling access to essential services ranging from medical visits to grocery shopping.

“We are trying to focus on a safe and connected built environment,” said Maddy Linsacum, a Routt County public health educator who is managing the effort.

---

---

The coalition was inspired by the built environment team at Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, which provides resources on its webpage CDPHE.colorado.gov/built-environment.

On Aug. 6, a group of coalition participants met to conduct a one-hour walking and rolling “inclusive community scan,” also known as a walking audit, in the vicinity of Safeway and Walgreens in Steamboat Springs. The group included individuals of various ages and physical fitness levels, two people who use wheelchairs, two dogs, a person pushing a stroller, City Engineer Matt Phillips and City Principal Planner Brad Calvert. The group noticed and discussed infrastructure conditions and took notes while walking and rolling around the area of U.S. Highway 40 and Pine Grove Road.

---

---

Tour participants noted good infrastructure such as a new crosswalk with a crossing button and flashing stop sign across Anglers Drive to the Anglers 400 affordable housing apartments. They crossed under Highway 40 in a protected pedestrian tunnel with lighting and a colorful mural along the ramp toward Safeway, but that tunnel also can close during times of higher water runoff down Fish Creek.

In addition to well-maintained sidewalks and protected walkways, the group also found street crossing areas with no crosswalks, concrete walkways that end in stairs and a blocked sidewalk due to outdoor patio dining created during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Busy running his restaurant, owner Aaron Clayton had not paused to realize that the edge of the outside dining area was blocking passage for people in wheelchairs or pushing strollers. When contacted this week, Clayton made a modification within hours.

“I definitely want to get that changed so that’s very accessible,” Clayton said.

On the hot afternoon, the group readily discussed how different the conditions would be in the snowy wintertime, including the possibility of plowed snow impeding the use of a crosswalk button by a person in a wheelchair.

“The goal of this activity is to look at our communities in a different perspective and understand challenges and opportunities for our community to engage in healthy activities by walking and cycling, and to feel safe doing those things,” explained Roberta Smith, director of Routt County Public Health.

The overall picture of the tour showed a wide mix of mobility options, styles and infrastructure depending on whether the development was new or old, located on private or public land, or managed by the city, state or businesses.

“You have to look at it and see if it’s in the interest of the entire traveling public,” said Phillips, the city engineer, of the complexity of infrastructure.

“The built environment is the layout and design of a community’s buildings, streets, sidewalks and infrastructure and includes the spaces and places where people live, learn, work, play and recreate,” according to the CDPHE built environment website. “The built environment shapes daily experiences and can impact a person’s physical, mental and social well-being.”

Safe and easy access to public transportation is another consideration for the coalition. Ian Engle, executive director at Northwest Colorado Center for Independence, who participated in the tour in his wheelchair, pointed out a concern that not all sidewalks, including those leading to bus stops, include curb cuts or dropped area in the curb.

Smith said the department has conducted practice scans in Oak Creek and plans to conduct a walking scan in Hayden. More than 10 partners from various organizations have participated in the five coalition meetings so far such as Integrated Community, Routt County Riders, Steamboat Springs School District, Yampa Valley Housing Authority, Yampa Valley Sustainability Council and the municipalities of Steamboat and Hayden.

Linsacum said the coalition plans to work to create an inventory of areas of opportunity for improvement to the built environment within each municipality. “We hope that through this collaborative approach, we will focus on how our built environment can encourage access to healthy activities such as walking or rolling and cycling,” Smith said. “We hope to better understand community context and then create action plans in collaboration with community partners to address gaps in data collected. Action plans could be new plans or policies or even demonstration projects.”