A city project designed to keep parked cars off Soldier Pass Road and out of adjoining neighborhoods is moving forward after being approved more than a year ago.

The design phase of the Posse Ground and Soldier Pass Road Trail and Parking Improvement project was recently completed, with construction set for after the first of the year. It will consist of a parking lot and a walking/biking pathway to help keep vehicles and pedestrians off the roadway.

“The design of the parking lot improvements was chal­lenging to fit into the site topography, preserving as much vegetation as possible and blending into the terrain,” said James Crowley, an associate engineer for the city. “The parking surface will be stabi­lized decomposed granite, while the access drive will be asphalt.”

Crowley said the project is a result of working with the residents along Soldier Pass Road and the Shadow Estates Homeowners Association to address the parking issues in the area.

“One of the concerns the project addresses is the safety along the road in rela­tion to the parking,” he said. “The project will remove the unsafe parking from the area, provide a safe place to park and a safe trail for access to the nearby trails.”

The new parking area will have a total of 40 parking spaces with two of those being Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible with access to two ADA-accessible rest rooms. The parking area will be located in Posse Grounds Park, north of the Arizona Water Co. maintenance yard and northwest of the Sedona Dog Park. The access to the new parking will be from Carruth Drive. The project is budgeted at $610,000.

Like the parking lot, the 3,850-foot-long pathway will be made of stabilized decom­posed granite, beginning at the new parking area and ending on Shadow Rock Drive. This material was also used to construct the Sunset Park shared-use path.

The project will soon go out to bid. Crowley said the city anticipates that this will be done around January, with a start date in the spring. Construction is anticipated to take nine months.

In response to requests from residents last year, the city requested the U.S. Forest Service implement restrictions and it paid for a National Environmental Protection Act study to help move the effort along, a city report states. Not long after this effort started, residents in the Shadow Estates Homeowners Association area requested that the city restrict parking in the neighborhood due to trailhead parking spilling over into residential streets.

Specifically, neighbors have cited the following issues:

■ Parking as a nuisance.

■ Parking creating a safety issue by restricting adequate lane width.

■ The nuisance relating to visitors gath­ering their gear and belongings outside their vehicles before their hike.

■ Trash and litter associated with visitors.

■ Visitors relieving themselves on vacant lots.

■ Safety issues with visitors walking on the road where lane width is already reduced due to parked vehicles.

The report states the city and property owners first tried incremental methods to address the issues, like placing boulders in strategic locations and adding striping and signage to improve traffic circulation. The issues continued and residents renewed a request to restrict public parking.

“The city has been very cautious about one-off restrictions without creating alterna­tives because limiting the supply of parking pushes demand onto other areas of the system,” it states. “Doing this repeatedly creates a worsening of parking problems as demand is shifted to an ever diminishing system.”