CDOT Working On 2 Big I-25 Projects At Same Time
THORNTON, Colo. (CBS4) - A lane of northbound Interstate 25 is closed between 84th Avenue and Thornton Parkway because of two big road projects the Colorado Department of Transportation is working on at the same time.
They're not raising the 88th Avenue bridge, they're lowering the highway, and apparently with good reason.
"It's been hit twice since the last November-ish area," Crystal Morgan with CDOT said.
The solution is to dig a foot out of the highway and bring the clearance for the bridge up to the current highway standard of 16 feet 6 inches.
"Instead of replacing the bridge, this is a much more economical option for us," Morgan said.
The other big piece of the major construction project is trying to improve the flow of traffic. Susan Mitchell took the bus to the Rockies game on Saturday, but during the week she says she has no other option but her car when leaving work to get home in Commerce City.
"Everybody slows and it's stop-and-go traffic the whole way," Mitchell said.
But now relief for Mitchell and thousands of motorists may be on the way. In a 6-mile stretch from U.S. 36 to 120th Avenue, CDOT is adding one HOV/tolled express lane north and south on I-25.
"So we're going to have people who would like to get a little bit of a faster travel time hopping into those express lanes. That decreases their travel time and it also decreases the travel time in the general purpose lanes as well," Morgan said.
That's the plan, but Mitchell is skeptical.
"The remediation they're going to try to do on I-25 is nice, but there's just too many cars," she said.
Next weekend they'll be digging a foot out of the southbound side and that means taking a lane out of service on south I-25. By October 2015, CDOT plans to expand to four lanes each -- on north and south I-25.
LINK: Traffic Section
