El Paso County’s plan for its roads through 2045 lists $2.45 billion of work, and about a quarter of it is on Tri-Lakes and Black Forest roads. Highway 105 and a handful of intersections have money and construction dates. The county never meant to pay the whole bill: the plan’s price tag is, above all, the basis for the road impact fee charged on new construction.
When El Paso County last rewrote its road plan, in December 2016, Black Forest came to the hearing. Judy von Ahlefeldt told the El Paso County Planning Commission that the county’s transportation planner had done “a remarkable job” but that “the public process was weak,” according to the minutes, and asked for a center turn lane on the county’s two-lane roads. Another resident spoke for 33 Black Forest residents who said they had not been notified.
On July 18, 2024, the commission adopted that plan’s replacement, a document of more than 100 pages pricing $2.45 billion of road work through 2045. The minutes record the public’s part in three words: “NO PUBLIC COMMENTS.” The vote was 9-0.
The document is the latest edition of the Major Transportation Corridors Plan, and it shapes the northern county’s roads more than any other. It decides which county roads are to be widened or paved, how much land must be kept clear along them for the widening after that, and, through a companion fee study, what a builder pays toward roads for each new house: $4,101 since Jan. 1, 2025. By the Independent’s count, 27 of its projects, worth about $644 million, sit on Tri-Lakes and Black Forest roads, a little over a quarter of the plan’s cost. The money and construction dates the Independent could find for them are on Highway 105 east of Lake Woodmoor Drive, plus a roundabout and a few intersections the plan prices separately. Most of the rest are on a list that the region’s road sales tax cannot touch until another list is paid for, or have no source of money named anywhere. And on the plan’s own map of traffic in 2045, Shoup, Hodgen and Vollmer roads are still congested after everything on the list is built.
What the plan does
The county’s Department of Public Works wrote the plan with Felsburg Holt & Ullevig, a transportation engineering firm, and the Planning Commission adopted it as part of Your El Paso County Master Plan, where it is “the principal plan for further planning and development of roads within unincorporated El Paso County.” Unincorporated land is 89 percent of a county that, the plan notes, “is larger than the state of Delaware.” In our area that means Woodmoor, Gleneagle and Black Forest, and the county roads along the edges of Monument and Palmer Lake: Highway 105 east of Interstate 25, and Baptist, County Line, Hodgen and Roller Coaster roads. Streets inside the two towns are the towns’ business, and state highways, such as CO 83, belong to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
It does three things. The first is a list of projects to be built by 2045, each costed with a 40 percent contingency, for a total of $2,447,500,000. New roads account for $1.2 billion of that, and one of them, the southern extension of Powers Boulevard far to the south of us, is $772 million on its own. Traffic signals and roundabouts are left out of the total; the county prices them separately.
The second is a class for every major county road in 2045, from principal arterial down to collector. The class decides how wide the road and its right-of-way should be, and what a developer must build when a subdivision fronts it. The classification “tells you what you need to build the road to if you’re a developer,” Victoria Chavez, the Public Works planner who led the plan, as she did its 2016 predecessor, told the Planning Commission in July. It also sets what the county would build with federal or regional sales-tax money.
The third is a “corridor preservation” map for 2065: how wide the main roads may eventually need to be, so that nothing permanent gets built where the lanes will go. More on that below.
The plan has no schedule. None of its tables gives a year, phase or priority for any project, and neither does the county’s online map of them. It is meant to be revised “approximately every five years”; this edition arrived seven and a half years after the last.
The northern list
The biggest items on Tri-Lakes and Black Forest roads, from the plan’s tables (costs in millions):
| Road | Stretch | Work | Cost | Sales-tax list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highway 105 | Jackson Creek Pkwy to Lake Woodmoor Dr | Widen to four lanes | $23.0 | — |
| Highway 105 | Lake Woodmoor Dr to Martingale Rd | Upgrade to first two lanes of a rural principal arterial | $35.0 | 2012 list |
| Highway 105 | Martingale Rd to CO 83 | Same | $65.0 | A to Arrowwood Dr; B beyond |
| Shoup Rd | CO 83 to Vollmer Rd | Rural upgrade, minor arterial | $72.0 | B |
| Shoup Rd (new) | Vollmer Rd to Meridian Rd | New road | $18.6 | — |
| Burgess Rd | Milam Rd to Meridian Rd | Rural upgrade, minor arterial | $71.0 | B |
| Black Forest Rd | Shoup Rd to Hodgen Rd; Hodgen Rd to County Line Rd | Rural upgrades | $28.6 each | — |
| Black Forest Rd | Old Ranch Rd to Shoup Rd | Widen to four lanes | $14.3 | B |
| Hodgen Rd | Winsome Way to Meridian Rd | Rural upgrade | $10.6 | A |
| Hodgen Rd | Black Forest Rd to Bar X Rd; Goshawk Rd to Winsome Way | Rural upgrades | $26.6 | B |
| Hodgen Rd | Roller Coaster Rd to CO 83 | Rural upgrade | $8.9 | — |
| Walker Rd | Steppler Rd to Black Forest Rd | Rural upgrade | $25.0 | B |
| Walker Rd | CO 83 to Steppler Rd | Rural upgrade | $13.5 | — |
| Walker Rd | Black Forest Rd to Meridian Rd | Pave the gravel | $28.4 | — |
| Vollmer Rd | Burgess Rd to Hodgen Rd | Rural upgrade | $29.1 | B, Burgess Rd to Shoup Rd only |
| Baptist Rd | Desiree Dr to Roller Coaster Rd | Rural upgrade | $28.5 | B |
| Meridian Rd | Latigo Blvd to Hodgen Rd | Rural upgrade | $28.2 | B |
| Milam Rd | Old Ranch Rd to Shoup Rd | Rural upgrade | $22.7 | B |
| Roller Coaster Rd | Old Northgate Rd to Hodgen Rd, plus a realignment to Higby Rd | Upgrade, new link | $21.8 | — |
| Old Denver Rd | Santa Fe Ave to Baptist Rd | Rural upgrade | $12.2 | — |
| County Line Rd | Monument Hill Rd to Vista Clara Ln | Rural upgrade | $9.2 | — |
The forecasts behind the list come from the county’s companion fee study, the Road Impact Fee Study Update of Aug. 20, 2024. Hodgen Road between Black Forest Road and Bar X is expected to go from about 3,500 vehicles a day in 2020 to about 12,100 in 2045. Walker Road between Steppler and Black Forest roads goes from about 800 to about 6,600. Black Forest Road south of Shoup goes from about 4,900 to more than 19,000, and the plan widens it to four lanes by 2045. County Line Road at Monument Hill Road, the stretch beside the proposed Buc-ee’s, goes from about 5,100 to about 10,800, a forecast from a 2023 model run, a year before Buc-ee’s petitioned Palmer Lake for annexation.
Residents flagged the north early. In the plan’s first round of public input, commenters singled out Highway 105 at Roller Coaster Road as “a particularly problematic intersection.”
Who pays
The short answer is that the plan does not say who pays for what. Chavez told the Gazette in May 2024, when the draft was out, that the county was not setting out to raise money for every project and would never pay the total bill; the full cost was needed to calculate impact fees, she said.
That is the plan’s main job. The county’s road impact fee, charged on new construction, is meant to make growth pay for the road capacity it uses. The plan says the fee program “will fund a significant portion of the future county road capacity needs” and “helps the County to ensure that new development pays its own way.” The fee study behind it prices the county’s whole growth program for 2020–2045 at $222,961,446, about 9 percent of the plan’s list, using standard unit costs that the study says “are not intended to fully cover all actual costs.” In May 2024 Chavez predicted the new fees would be “pretty comparable” to the old. They were: the fee for a single-family house went from $3,830 to $4,101, up 7.1 percent.
Developers also build roads outright, as a condition of approval, to whatever class the plan assigns. That is how a good part of the northern network is likely to appear: a piece at a time, in front of each new subdivision.
The rest of the county’s capital money for roads comes mostly from the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (PPRTA), a regional sales tax that voters renewed with a project list in 2022. Unincorporated Woodmoor, Gleneagle and Black Forest are inside the authority. Monument and Palmer Lake are not members, though the state’s sales-tax tables show parts of both towns inside its taxing area, where shoppers pay its 1 percent. Its list comes in two parts, and the rule between them is blunt: the authority “shall not expend roadway capital improvements on any ‘B’ projects until the listed ‘A’ projects have been funded.” The county’s fee study adds that “no B-list projects have been funded in recent years.”
The northern A list is short: the Baptist, Hodgen and Roller Coaster intersection; Highway 105 from Furrow Road to Arrowwood Drive; Hodgen Road from Winsome Way to Meridian Road; and the Stapleton Drive–Briargate Parkway connection from Black Forest Road to Vollmer Road. The B list is where the big northern projects live: Shoup Road from CO 83 to Vollmer, Burgess, Walker from Steppler to Black Forest Road, Vollmer from Stapleton to Shoup, Milam, Black Forest Road from Research Parkway to Shoup, Baptist from Desiree to Roller Coaster, two stretches of Hodgen, Meridian from Hodgen to Rex, and Highway 105 from Arrowwood to CO 83.
The county’s own schedule for the north, presented to the Northern El Paso County Coalition of Community Organizations (NEPCO) in September, matches that. Highway 105 between Lake Woodmoor Drive and Martingale Road is set for construction from late 2026 to late 2027; the Furrow-to-Arrowwood stretch from mid-2027 to late 2028; the Baptist, Hodgen and Roller Coaster roundabout from mid-2027. The Vollmer intersections at Burgess and Shoup, built with federal money, follow in 2027 and 2028. Hodgen from Winsome to Meridian, an A-list project, is listed as “Design 2030; build TBD.” The northern phase of the Beacon Lite Road rebuild, to County Line Road, is on hold. The Stapleton–Briargate link at Black Forest’s southern edge, an A-list project paid for from the sales tax, is in design, with construction set for 2028–29, according to the county’s quarterly report to the authority. The presentation put the authority’s capital money for county roads at $20 million to $25 million a year. Smaller jobs come out of the authority’s program money rather than its named projects. On Oct. 20 the commissioners approved a $2.6 million roundabout on Woodmoor Drive at the entrance to the Monument Park-and-Ride, paid from that money.
For scale: the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments (PPACG), which plans transportation for the whole region, expects about $2.6 billion for capital projects across all of it between 2025 and 2050, not counting state highway money, and about 78 percent of that from the same sales tax. Its 2050 plan says plainly that “the projected funding for the region is not anticipated to fulfill regional needs.” The county’s list for its unincorporated roads alone is nearly the size of the region’s 25-year forecast.
Put together, the plan works as a price list and a rulebook. It tells developers what to build and what to pay, and tells landowners how much roadside to keep clear. What gets built, and when, is decided mostly through the sales-tax lists and the county’s annual budget. The county’s 2027 budget book says Public Works will “implement and continuously improve” a “newly developed multi-year Capital Improvement Project Program”; the Independent has not found it published. Asked whether Public Works keeps a multi-year schedule, the county pointed to its Capital Improvement Projects web page, which lists ongoing projects with “project schedules where available.”
The proposed 2027 budget shows where the road money goes. The Road and Bridge Fund would be $41.2 million, including $7 million of one-time money for resurfacing and paving, and pavement preservation would get $12 million. In the north, the county would put $3.3 million of its own money into Highway 105 between Lake Woodmoor Drive and Martingale Road, and $2.7 million is listed for the two Vollmer roundabouts, paid with federal and county money. The only road project paid from impact fees next year is $520,000 for Bradley Road, in the south of the county. At the 2027 rate, the plan’s list would take the entire Road and Bridge Fund about 59 years, if it paid for nothing else, plowing included. The commissioners hear Public Works’ budget requests on Oct. 27 and are to adopt the budget on Dec. 8.
Asked how much of the $2.45 billion it expects from each source of money, the county said in written answers on Oct. 26 that “a reliable allocation of the total estimated cost among funding sources cannot be projected over its 20-to-40-year planning horizon,” because funding and timing “depend on development activity, available revenues and grant opportunities.” A project’s place in the plan, it said, “does not constitute a formal project proposal or a commitment to funding or construction.” Projects on the sales tax’s B list “may advance through other eligible funding sources as opportunities arise.”
Congested anyway
The plan’s consultants ran the traffic model again with every 2045 project in place, and the county’s own data from that run, the figures behind the plan’s congestion map, tells the rest. Shoup Road from CO 83 to Black Forest Road would carry 1.1 to 1.9 times its capacity in 2045. Hodgen Road from Black Forest Road to Vollmer would carry 1.0 to 1.2 times its capacity, and Vollmer between Burgess and just north of Shoup about the same. The plan calls a road congested when it is “at or over its capacity.” The fee study points the same way for Shoup: 13,682 vehicles a day in 2045 on a two-lane road with a capacity of 14,000.
The plan explains the choice in a sentence. Some widenings and new four-lane roads “were determined to not be needed by 2045,” and were “deferred to the 2065 plan.” Hodgen and Shoup get four lanes only on the 2065 map.
One project came and went along the way. In November 2023 the consultant’s public map carried a $74 million upgrade of Hodgen Road from CO 83 to Vollmer Road, 5.3 miles, with a note: “Originally modeled as 4 lane widening; but not needed by 2045; changed project to match PPRTA upgrades.” The adopted plan keeps a 1.3-mile piece of it, Black Forest Road to Bar X, at $21 million.
Asked about those roads, the county said its model “identifies potential congestion on portions of these corridors with the planned 2045 improvements,” it said, and the plan keeps two lanes on them for 2045 “while preserving corridors for longer term needs,” weighing “projected demand, land use, right-of-way needs and fiscal considerations.” As for Hodgen, the county said earlier sales-tax projects “addressed the remainder of this corridor,” and the Black Forest Road to Bar X piece is “the final segment of that larger improvement effort.”
What corridor preservation means for a landowner
The 2065 map is the part of the plan most likely to touch someone who never builds a road. The preservation map “helps our planners make sure people don’t build giant buildings right in an area where we know we’re going to have a road expansion in the future, helps with the setbacks,” Chavez told the commission.
The county’s Land Development Code turns that into rules. Setbacks, it says, “shall be measured from the proposed right-of-way line of roadways as depicted within the MTCP.” A new subdivision must dedicate “adequate right-of-way” for the plan’s roads, or, with the Board’s leave, note a “future ROW” on its plat instead. Where a subdivision adjoins an existing road, the owner’s “ordinary obligation” is half of the extra width. The plan itself says right-of-way preservation “shall be based on the 2065 Functional Classification.”
Hodgen and Shoup show why that matters. For 2045 both are rural minor arterials, which take a 100-foot right-of-way. For 2065 both become rural principal arterials, at 180 feet. If setbacks along them are measured from the 2065 line, the line sits about 90 feet from the center of the road instead of 50, about 40 more feet of a frontage lot. The code cites a “BoCC policy” twice; the nearest thing the Independent found is a line in the county’s engineering manual: for minor arterials, “rights-of-way, easements, setbacks, and access limitations shall be pursued through the land development process.” Which line applies is a question for the county’s Planning and Community Development Department, and the department’s answer is that it depends on the lot. The county “cannot provide a blanket determination on whether the 100 foot or 180 would apply,” it said; the width and the setback are decided property by property, in review of “the individual development application or building permit request.” It did not say what the “BoCC policy” is.
Road plans have started arguments in Black Forest before. The county’s 1987 update of the Black Forest Preservation Plan recorded that “the decision to initiate the 1974 Plan was primarily a response to plans for a major freeway corridor along the alignment of Vollmer Road,” later moved east to Meridian, “a compromise since the original Committee wanted the alignment shifted totally out of the trees” (the Independent’s history of zoning in the forest tells that story). In 1985, as the county drew a new transportation corridor plan, the Black Forest Land Use Committee, then chaired by von Ahlefeldt, commended the county’s transportation department for “planning major corridors around Black Forest rather than through the community” but asked that the expressway corridor along Meridian Road be moved “further east, out of the trees, to at least the Eastonville-Curtis Road alignment.”
The 1987 update noted that “the stated desire of many area residents to minimize arterial penetration of the timbered Area sometimes conflicts with the County’s overall policy of promoting efficiency and future flexibility in planning the future roadway network,” and it recommended that major corridors run “south and west of the trees.” It put the typical right-of-way in the planning area at 60 feet, “adequate for most rural two-laned roadways,” warned that “the condemnation and/or purchase of right-of-way is very expensive,” and asked that upgrades to Shoup, Black Forest and Vollmer roads be made “within existing rights-of-way” where possible. The county retired that plan, with nine other small-area plans, when it adopted Your El Paso County Master Plan in 2021. Two years earlier the Black Forest Land Use Committee had written a vision statement for that master plan asking that roads in its planning area “be limited to two-lane roads,” with right-of-way that “shall not exceed 70 feet except at intersections where turn lanes may be necessary.” The 2024 plan’s standard right-of-way is 90 feet for a rural major collector and 100 feet for a minor arterial. It widens Black Forest Road between Old Ranch and Shoup roads to four lanes by 2045, and its 2065 map makes Hodgen Road from CO 83 to Vollmer a four-lane principal arterial, at 180 feet.
The committee has not changed its mind. Terry Stokka, who answered for it, said it still holds to two lanes and 70 feet, with the extra 10 feet over the usual 60 used only at intersections and where a center lane is needed. A wider right-of-way means wider cleared slopes beside the road, he said, and in the timbered area that “will destroy the tree-lined roads we enjoy today.” The committee opposes the widenings for the trees and for the houses along the roads. Stokka once counted 96 driveways and about seven side streets on Black Forest Road between the tree line at the Palmer Divide and the one at Old Ranch Road; some homes, he said, are close enough that a wider right-of-way “would come right up to their door.” He would build around the forest instead:
“We feel that if the roads surrounding the Black Forest were improved or built, there would not be a need to widen roads within the forest.”
The Stapleton–Briargate link, now in design, is one such road. If it carried east-west traffic along the forest’s south side, Stokka said, “these road improvements inside the forest would not be needed.”
The crossroads at the center of the forest shows what a wider line would meet. The Black Forest School, a one-room log schoolhouse that volunteers built in 1920 and 1921, faces Shoup Road there; it was about 30 feet from the pavement when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The Black Forest Community Church, at the same intersection, has been on the State Register since 2016. The plan’s 2065 map makes Shoup a four-lane principal arterial through the crossroads, the class that takes a 180-foot right-of-way. The plan adds that its preservation map “does not imply that all these facilities will be improved to the level indicated.”
The lines are not surveys. In 2016 Chavez told the commission the plan “does not look at individual lots,” according to the minutes. In 2024 she put it more directly: “If we show a new road going through your house, we’re not really going to go through your house. It’s a general alignment.”
Two gravel roads and a town road
The plan says gravel roads were put on the paving list if they “currently carry more than 300 ADT (and/or more than 500 ADT in 2045),” ADT being vehicles a day. Walker Road from Black Forest Road to Meridian Road, a $28.4 million job, averages 298 vehicles a day in the county’s figures, two short of the mark, but its western mile and a half carries 528 to 700 a day, which clears it. Wildridge Road, $7.9 million, does not: its busiest stretch carried 284 vehicles a day in 2021, and the county forecasts 200 to 255 for 2045. The plan also weighs condition, safety and dust. Traffic, the county said, is “one consideration”; it also weighs “maintenance needs, weather impacts, public input and service requests,” and the thresholds on page 58 “are not the sole criteria for including a project.”
Old Denver Road is a stranger case. The plan lists a $12.2 million upgrade from Santa Fe Avenue to Baptist Road, which the county’s map data describes as widening “from 2 lanes to 3 lanes, with the center lane being a two-way left turn lane,” with the status “Unfunded.” The same data marks the road “Non-County Maintained,” and for good reason. In March 2008 the county deeded the road’s right-of-way to Monument for “Ten Dollars and No Cents ($10.00) and other good and valuable consideration,” and the deed says the town “accepts all maintenance responsibilities associated with the road,” including construction. Monument annexed the strip in June 2025.
The project appears to have come from the town. The source the county’s data gives, a regional capital project of the area’s metropolitan planning organization, appears to be PPACG’s 2045 plan, adopted in 2020, whose unfunded list includes “Old Denver Rd. Widening… from Baptist Rd. north to Second St.,” sponsored by Monument, at $20 million. The county’s fee study counts $2.19 million of the project toward its fee calculations. The county’s own fee rules say that once an area is annexed, its roads “will be removed from the MTCP and the Road Impact Fee Program during the next update.”
Meanwhile someone is building. The construction on Old Denver Road this year is a private realignment through the Conexus development, between the old road and I-25, approved by the town in 2022 “to shift traffic away from the established neighborhoods to the west,” according to a town staff report. The developer’s August slides show a “major collector” in a 70-foot right-of-way, with completion set for “September/October 2026”; its February slides had said August. It is not open yet. The town scheduled a closure of the old road between Santa Fe Avenue and Creek Valley Court from Oct. 13 to Nov. 30 “to construct the North intersection connecting the new alignments of Old Denver Road and Doc Close Road,” with through traffic detoured by Baptist Road and Highway 105. Conexus Metropolitan District No. 1 sold $16.4 million of bonds in 2025 to finance “a portion of the Public Improvements”; its filings do not break out the road. The bypassed stretch was renamed Doc Close Road in May, after a town contest that drew 164 suggestions. The town’s proposed 2026–2031 capital plan carries three Old Denver Road culvert replacements, $8.6 million in all, set for 2029 and 2030, and an overlay in 2028. It has no widening.
Highway 105 has a smaller puzzle of its own. The plan’s widening table lists four lanes from Jackson Creek Parkway to Lake Woodmoor Drive as a 2045 project, at $23 million. The county’s map data marks the same project 2065, with the note “Widening to 4 lanes is not needed by 2045.” The county says the adopted plan, not the map data, is “the official reference” for horizons and costs, so it counts the widening as a 2045 project.
How it was adopted
The county did ask. The plan counts more than 139,000 “community and stakeholder engagement contacts” over three rounds and 623 comments through its online tools; the second draft, posted in May 2024, drew 42 comments, “mostly in support of the plan.” The third round’s results were promised on the project website (“Results will be posted here once summarized”) and never posted there, though the adopted plan carries a one-page summary.
On May 8, 2024, the county’s land-use system sent 117 requests for review to 70 agencies, offices and groups. In our area they included the Town of Monument, Lewis-Palmer School District 38, the Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District, NEPCO and the Black Forest Land Use Committee. The Black Forest committee wrote back that it had given “this very complicated document” a “cursory review” and had “no inputs at this time.” The county’s file logs no reply from NEPCO.
The plan came to the Planning Commission twice. On June 6, 2024 it was a presentation, listed as a non-action item, at which Chavez said this was her third such plan in 16 years. On July 18 the commission adopted it. Chavez showed the members a letter of support from the Housing and Building Association of Colorado Springs that she said had arrived “just a couple days ago.” The first motion would have forwarded the plan to the Board of County Commissioners. “Doesn’t it stop with us?” a member asked. “It does stop with you,” came the answer. The board, the commission was told, would see the plan when it took up the road impact fee “that is based on this plan,” and “we did have a workshop with the board, so they did see it.” The county says the workshop was the board’s informal session of May 7, 2024, one of two on the plan in its agendas (the other was Nov. 7, 2023). Both agendas carry the same heading: “Items discussed are Non-Action items and no decisions will be made.”
The county commissioners have voted twice since, each time on the fee rather than the plan: on Oct. 1, 2024, when the new fee schedule passed 5-0 on the consent agenda, and on Dec. 9, 2025, when amendments to the fee’s rules passed the same way. In 2016 the Board had passed a resolution of its own, “to consent to the approval” of that year’s plan.
What comes next
By its own rules the plan is due for revision around 2029 or 2030; the fee program’s rules say at least every six years “or as funds are available.” Between updates, a developer who wants a road added can lead an amendment through two Planning Commission hearings, with a traffic study and a staff report the developer drafts, before the Board adds the road to the fee program.
Harold Larson, a member of NEPCO’s board who commented for himself rather than the coalition, would raise the bar for those studies. The plan’s own congestion figures, he said, show the county “still projecting traffic more than planning for the communities already here,” and “a 2045 plan only works if it guides the development decisions being made today.” He wants a detailed study for every development and every road added or altered for it, one that looks at the whole corridor at full build-out, says which fixes are funded and puts safety first, reviewed independently and posted early, so that associations along Hodgen, Shoup, Vollmer, Walker, Baptist and Highway 105 “can see how new growth will fit in with their neighborhoods before the hearings, not after.” He also credited Public Works for walking northern communities through its road schedule. “There are good people there,” he said.
Other documents that bear on the same roads are being rewritten now: the county’s Land Development Code, which holds the setback rule, and Monument’s own comprehensive plan and transportation master plan, which the town says “will identify more capital projects.” The Town Council is scheduled to take up the comprehensive plan on Nov. 2. Stokka said the Black Forest committee tried to review the county’s draft code but found it “so complicated and detailed that we couldn’t really make meaningful inputs”; the comments it did send did not cover road widths.
Palmer Lake may join the authority as a member. Its town administrator, Patrick Davidson, told trustees on Oct. 8 that staff would “strongly recommend” joining the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, and that, because joining involves a tax, the question may have to wait for an election in November 2027. Under the authority’s founding agreement, a town gets in only with a vote of its board and of its voters, the consent of every existing member and a two-thirds vote of the authority’s board, and membership begins the next Jan. 1. The same agreement sets the terms for latecomers. A member that joins after Jan. 1, 2023 gets nothing from the capital list voters approved in 2022, which runs through 2034; its share is maintenance money, divided by population.
The Black Forest Land Use Committee’s reply in 2024 may be the most practical reading of the plan anyone has written. “We will address particular road issues,” it told the county, “as they come along.”
This article was updated Oct. 26, 2026, to add comments from Terry Stokka of the Black Forest Land Use Committee, which arrived after publication.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Five Acres at a Time: Sixty Years of Zoning in Black Forest, on how a road plan set off Black Forest’s first preservation plan · What Made Each Place Distinct, on the 2021 retirement of the county’s small-area plans, including Black Forest’s · Buc-ee’s Files Its Site Plan, on traffic forecasts for County Line Road at the Buc-ee’s site · Palmer Lake Adopts New Board Rules as Its Administrator Warns of a Million-Dollar Shortfall, on the town’s interest in joining PPRTA · Woodmoor Drive’s New Roundabout Will Be at the Park-and-Ride Entrance, on the $2.6 million roundabout the commissioners approved Oct. 20
County record: Major Transportation Corridors Plan (adopted July 18, 2024; accessible edition) · County Public Works MTCP page · Road Impact Fee Study Update, Aug. 20, 2024 · Road Impact Fee Implementation Document, 2025 · Board Resolutions 24-377 (Oct. 1, 2024) and 25-337 (Dec. 9, 2025) · Planning Commission minutes, Dec. 6, 2016 and July 18, 2024 · EDARP file MP241 · El Paso County Land Development Code §§ 5.4.3, 8.4.4, 8.5.4 (Municode) · County project map data (ArcGIS) · Public Works presentation to NEPCO, Sept. 12, 2026
Regional: PPRTA 2022 ballot project lists and capital program page · Colorado Department of Revenue, Colorado Jurisdiction Codes & Rates, July–December 2026 · PPRTA Fifth Amended Intergovernmental Agreement (2022), §§ 5, 7, 12 · PPACG 2050 Long Range Transportation Plan (financial and implementation chapters) · PPACG Moving Forward 2045 Regional Transportation Plan, Table 7–2.7
Town of Monument: 2008 Bargain and Sale Deed (Old Denver Highway right-of-way) · Old Denver Road annexation file (Ordinance 11-2025) · Resolution 30-2026 · Conexus Lot 1 Filing 2 staff report, July 8, 2026, and developer presentation, Aug. 17, 2026 · Proposed 2026–2031 Capital Improvement Plan
Town of Palmer Lake: Board of Trustees minutes, Oct. 8, 2026 (draft, in the Oct. 22 packet), and the meeting’s recording · Town administrator’s weekly updates, Oct. 2 and Oct. 9, 2026
Black Forest: Black Forest Preservation Plan Update (Planning Commission Res. MP-87-5, Aug. 18, 1987) · Black Forest Land Use Committee, report and letter to the Planning Commission on the transportation corridor plan, April 11 and May 22, 1985 (county file MP85007) · Black Forest Land Use Committee, Black Forest Vision Statement 2020 (Dec. 4, 2019)
Historic registers: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Black Forest School (listed Nov. 3, 1992) · Colorado State Register of Historic Properties nomination, Black Forest Community Church (5EP.6722, 2016)
Other reporting: The Gazette, “Meeting future El Paso County road needs would cost $2.44 billion,” Mary Shinn, May 7, 2024
Entities: El Paso County Department of Public Works · Planning and Community Development · Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority · Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments · NEPCO · Black Forest Land Use Committee · Town of Monument
Methodology
The Independent assigned the plan’s projects to the Tri-Lakes or Black Forest side using the midpoint of each project’s line in the county’s own map data: Tri-Lakes, west of longitude −104.765 and north of latitude 39.03; Black Forest, between −104.765 and −104.60 and north of 38.975. The −104.765 line tracks CO 83 to within about three-quarters of a mile, and using the highway itself as the line moves no project from one side to the other. That is a rough rule, not a boundary; it puts 27 projects worth $643.6 million in our area, 26.3 percent of the plan’s $2,447.5 million, and leaves out the Stapleton–Briargate link ($38 million) at Black Forest’s southern edge. Costs are the plan’s printed figures, which include a 40 percent contingency. The fee study prices the same roads at standard unit costs and arrives at much lower numbers; the two sets of figures measure different things and should not be added. Congestion ratios are the county’s own 2045 figures from the plan’s online map data, which match the plan’s printed congestion map (Figure 26) on every road the Independent compared. Lane counts for 2065 are read from the plan’s Figure 40 and the same data. Which projects are on PPRTA’s A and B lists comes from PPRTA’s 2022 ballot list, matched to each project’s limits; where the county’s map data tags a project differently, the table follows the ballot. Quotes from the June 6 and July 18, 2024 hearings come from machine transcripts of the county’s recordings and were checked against the recordings. The Old Denver Road ownership history comes from the 2008 deed and the 2025 annexation file, both read in full.
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/government/el-paso-county-road-plan-tri-lakes-black-forest/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
