Children in Monument, Colorado's fast-growing Tri-Lakes area have been getting bused or driven to elementary school partly because there is no safe way to walk, a problem Lewis-Palmer School District 38 is now moving to fix by building new pedestrian trails and a bridge.
The district, which serves roughly 6,500 students across Monument and Palmer Lake in northern El Paso County, is seeking contractors for the project under the federal Safe Routes to School program. The specific schools served, the trail length, the bridge span and the total project cost have not been disclosed in the solicitation summary.
The Tri-Lakes corridor has been one of the fastest-growing stretches of Colorado's Front Range for more than a decade, with new subdivisions spreading through terrain that was never designed for pedestrians. Many neighborhoods lack continuous sidewalks or safe road crossings, and natural features including Monument Creek and Dirty Woman Creek drainages physically cut off residential areas from school campuses. A pedestrian bridge would address exactly that kind of barrier, which has long forced families into cars regardless of how close they live to a school.
Source: NationGraph.
The dynamics here are common across American suburbs. In 1969, nearly half of K-8 students walked or biked to school. By 2009, that share had fallen to 13%, amid suburban sprawl, school consolidation and the car-dependent development patterns that now define the Monument area. The federal Safe Routes to School program was created in 2005 to push back against that trend, and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law added significant new funding, touching off a fresh wave of pedestrian infrastructure projects at school districts around the country.
Colorado administers its share of the program through CDOT, which awards roughly $2.5 million annually in Safe Routes grants across the state. Whether Lewis-Palmer's project is funded through a CDOT grant, district capital funds or another source has not been confirmed.
The district's elementary schools, including Lewis-Palmer, Bear Creek, Palmer Lake, Prairie Winds and Ray Kilmer, each sit in different neighborhood contexts along corridors like Highway 105 and Jackson Creek Parkway that have drawn consistent attention for traffic congestion as enrollment has grown. Which campus or campuses this project is intended to serve is a key detail not yet public.
