A diagram inside a regional creek-improvement document has revived long-standing anxiety among residents near the old Rock Island railroad corridor, who fear it signals a renewed push to carry Constitution Avenue westward through Monument Valley Park to Interstate 25.
The source of concern is an illustration inside the Fountain Creek Watershed Vision & Implementation Plan — referred to as the COS Creek Plan — a high-level document outlining potential improvements to Fountain and Monument creeks as they move through Colorado Springs, produced for the city by the nonprofit Pikes Peak Waterways. The plan envisions returning Monument Creek to a more natural condition, creating areas for sunbathing and relaxation, enabling various forms of boating, and building on existing assets such as America the Beautiful Park.
Within the design covering Monument Valley Park and the Centennial neighborhood, a bridge crossing near the Popcycle Bridge is labeled "Expanded Bridge (Future)," with a potential road on the far side connecting through a roundabout to Fontanero Street on the park's west edge. The plan offers no specifics on how that bridge might change, and Constitution Avenue is neither referenced in the design nor named anywhere in the document. Nevertheless, prior city department proposals had routed a Constitution Avenue extension along that same path toward Fontanero.
The idea of pushing Constitution Avenue straight to I-25 has come forward multiple times in city history, and on each prior occasion the council turned it down, calling instead for the old railroad corridor to become a landscaped walking trail rather than a heavily traveled arterial road. As recently as February 2023, the council voted to pull an extension study from the city's Connect COS transportation plan and explicitly said the corridor should be evaluated as a dedicated greenway.
Neighborhood representatives first noticed the extension appearing in an earlier draft of the watershed plan in late 2024, raised the issue with plan organizers, and were told the depiction was an error given that the council had already required such studies to be removed. Residents asked Pikes Peak Waterways and the city to correct the detail at that time, and when the element remained in the July update, it deepened concerns that the road connection might be seriously pursued.
City communications director Jason Strickland stated that "no agency is proposing such a change." Pikes Peak Waterways president Jan Martin, a former Colorado Springs council member, said the plan "is really focused on the waterways," adding, "We're not talking about roads. Nowhere in the plan do we talk about road changes." Both Martin and Strickland noted that the column's author had not contacted city staff or Pikes Peak Waterways before publishing. Martin said organizers would revise the illustration to calm neighborhood worries.
At a Wednesday board meeting, the Historic Neighborhoods Partnership took up the matter and prepared a letter to Pikes Peak Waterways calling for that portion of the design to be removed. Partnership Chair Dianne Bridges said the extension remains a particularly charged issue because the corridor runs through roughly a dozen neighborhoods, and argued that a plan of this kind should reflect only changes the city actually intends to pursue. Because Pikes Peak Waterways is a nonprofit rather than a city body, the document carries no binding authority, and Martin said it would not be forwarded to the council until specific projects were ready to break ground.
Whether Pikes Peak Waterways revises the disputed illustration — and whether the council moves to formally designate the railroad corridor as a permanent greenway — remains an open question.