{"id":2454339,"date":"2020-02-09T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/vail-pass-project-will-be-complicated-expensive\/"},"modified":"2020-02-09T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T05:00:00","slug":"vail-pass-project-will-be-complicated-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/vail-pass-project-will-be-complicated-expensive\/","title":{"rendered":"Vail Pass project will be complicated, expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Colorado Department of Transportation plow trucks remove snow Friday on I-70 in Vail after the interstate was pounded with snow from a potent storm.<\/strong>
Justin Q. McCarty<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When it was finished in 1978, Interstate 70 over Vail Pass was a key element in linking eastern and western Colorado. Today, the west side of Vail Pass is a frequent, literal roadblock in Colorado\u2019s transportation system.<\/p>\n

The eastbound lanes often close because of weather or stricken vehicles, and the westbound lanes mix very fast and very slow vehicles with sometimes-deadly results.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Department of Transportation for years has been looking at ways to make the 10-mile stretch of highway from East Vail to the top of Vail Pass safer and more efficient.<\/p>\n

That planning started years ago, and there\u2019s no final plan, but transportation officials now are working on an environmental analysis of a plan that would add a third lane to both the eastbound and westbound lanes on the west side of the pass.<\/p>\n

Martha Miller is the Colorado Department of Transportation\u2019s Program Engineer for the eastern portion of the department\u2019s Region 3, which covers much of western Colorado.<\/p>\n

Miller said the idea behind the project is to add capacity and enhance safety. On the westbound, downhill side, a third lane could help separate fast, less-fast and slow traffic, making the highway safer.<\/p>\n

The same is kind of true on the eastbound side, where heavy trucks crawl up the pass. Most passenger vehicles these days can make the steep climb going roughly the speed limit.<\/p>\n

Limiting closures<\/p>\n

But the real safety and traffic benefits come in case of accidents. If there\u2019s an accident or incident that closes one lane, state policy calls for closing the adjacent lane to keep emergency responders safe from traffic. If there are only two lanes available, both lanes close.<\/p>\n

That leads to full closures of the highway. In the case of serious accidents, those closures can last for hours.<\/p>\n

A third lane would keep traffic flowing.<\/p>\n

Improving the west side of Vail Pass will be the focus of a Feb. 13 meeting at the Vail Golf Club clubhouse.<\/p>\n

Expanding the highway also would correct some flaws in the original design, which dates to the early 1970s. Sharp curves need to be smoothed, and the highway needs to better coexist with wildlife and Gore Creek.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the change in what we want highways to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe expectation (today) is that people will have mobility on I-70,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThat\u2019s a hard expectation to meet sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any I-70 expansion has to take all those elements into consideration.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s going to be expensive. The current estimate for the entire project \u2014 which includes more than 20 new bridges \u2014 is roughly $750 million.<\/p>\n

Finding funding<\/p>\n

That money will be hard to come by.<\/p>\n

Miller noted that state officials late last year came up with a package of $1.6 billion for projects around all of Colorado, from road repair to new projects.<\/p>\n

That money is important, since the state hasn\u2019t raised its gas tax since the 1980s, and the last federal fuel tax increase came in the early 1990s. Voters over the years have rejected several ideas for raising more money for transportation.<\/p>\n

Even with last year\u2019s funding boost, the Vail Pass project isn\u2019t getting half of that pot of money.<\/p>\n

Miller said the influx of funds from 2019 has to be spread around, with much of the funding in this region going to rural roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of roads we haven\u2019t touched in 20 years,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a regional appreciation of the need to get the Vail Pass project done.<\/p>\n

The transportation department breaks the state down into \u201ctransportation planning regions.\u201d The Vail Pass project is at the top of the to-do list in this region. The I-70 Coalition, a group of local governments and businesses, has Vail Pass as the second-most important project in the corridor between Golden and Dotsero. The highway on Floyd Hill is at the top of that group\u2019s list.<\/p>\n

Miller said representatives of other counties in the planning region have all agreed to forsake some of their funding to get the Vail Pass project rolling.<\/p>\n

In addition, the state has applied for a $100 million federal grant for Vail Pass. But if that grant comes through, the state has only a good down payment on the entire project.<\/p>\n

Miller said getting the Vail Pass project done will probably look like the process of getting State Highway 82 finished in the Roaring Fork Valley. That project was done in phases over several years.<\/p>\n

If Vail Pass has to be done in phases, Miller said the first part of the work will likely start about halfway between East Vail and the top of the pass. Getting the entire project done could take years.<\/p>\n

Getting money for one phase or another \u201cis what we can do right now,\u201d said Margaret Bowes, director of the I-70 Coalition. \u201cIt\u2019s tough when voters keep rejecting raising money for transportation,\u201d Bowes said.<\/p>\n

But lack of funding doesn\u2019t affect the need, Bowes added.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike the Eisenhower Tunnel, Vail Pass is a huge gateway,\u201d Bowes said. \u201cIt\u2019s critical to the movement of goods and services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vail Pass was closed for one reason or another 63 times in 2019, Bowes noted. \u201cYou can guess the impact of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vail Daily Business Editor Scott Miller can be reached at smiller@vaildaily.com<\/a> or 970-748-2930.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado Department of Transportation plow trucks remove snow Friday on I-70 in Vail after the interstate was pounded with snow from a potent storm.Justin Q. McCarty When it was finished in 1978, Interstate 70 over Vail Pass was a key element in linking eastern and western Colorado. Today, the west side of Vail Pass is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 16:29:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}