The city of Tucson announced plans yesterday to construct a one-mile stretch of road through the downtown area at the cost of about $85 million.

Without additional funding from the state, the project will not be completed for 20 years, according to a news release. The release said the time frame "can be compressed if new funding sources are identified."

Libby Stone, executive director of the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association, said she thinks the downtown segment of the Barraza-Aviation Parkway will give University of Arizona students easy access to downtown and North Fourth Avenue.

There will be an increase in vehicle and pedestrian traffic Stone said, adding who added that the improvements to the area will make people want to reside downtown and will boost downtown's economic base.

Stone said the new parkway cuts driving time from Tucson's southeast side in half. She said community interest in the downtown area will increase as a result.

"The completion of the Golf Links (Road) to downtown segment means that students who live in the southeast can use it," said Armando Monteverde, Barraza-Aviation Parkway project manager. "The downtown model will let students gain access to downtown."

Democratic Mayor George Miller said the completion of the project's downtown portion would result in the area becoming a center of activity for the entire valley by the year 2000.

"The downtown segment still awaits funding," said Miller, who added that a statewide 10-cent per gallon gas tax initiative to raise money for transportation failed last year when the state legislature voted on it.

Monteverde said without funding for the project the city would have a "hard time meeting demands for the future."

It is hard to speculate how the legislature will decide on the gas-tax incentive this year, he said.

Monteverde said $2.2 million has been spent on studies and development of the downtown project, which is 30 percent completed.

The Arizona Department of Transportation is one year away from completing its section of the new Barraza-Aviation Highway, which connects East Golf Links Road to South Kino Parkway, according to the news release.

"ADOT is separate," Monteverde said. "The city is responsible for building the last mile."

The transportation department had planned the parkway's last mile, but the city of Tucson assumed responsibility for the downtown segment in 1988 in response to public concerns over the impacts on downtown neighborhoods and businesses, the news release st ated.

A city-lead study to develop a "transportation vision" for the downtown area, called the Downtown Land Use and Circulation Study, began in 1989, according to the news release. Plans for the downtown segment were approved in 1993 by the mayor, City Council , and Pima Association of Governments, the release stated.

The first work on the project by the city will be to add screen walls, bike paths, landscaping and lighting along Broadway Boulevard at the underpass, the release stated.

The release also stated that $400,000 has been committed to the project by the Pima Association of Governments for the design of a new Fourth Avenue underpass which will accommodate the Fourth Avenue trolley.

The design includes plans for the rehabilitation of the existing Fourth Avenue underpass originally constructed in 1916.

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