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Highway plans for summer

CDOT announces cone zones made possible with Ref C

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 13, 2006 at midnight

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The state's road builders today mapped out two dozen metro-area highway projects for the summer, totaling $125 million.

That doesn't include the completion of work on the five-year, $1.75 billion T-REX project, which is to wrap up Sept. 1. Most of the projects are funded through the Colorado Department of Transportation's regular budget. But others are going forward now because of voter approval of Referendum C last November.

Among them is a $15 million flyover ramp in Adams County to take traffic from the new segment of Interstate 270 eastbound onto eastbound I-76, near York Street. Work will begin this summer.

That project will complete all the new interchange work there and on I-25 at U.S. 36. It will also enable traffic headed south on I-25 to access I-76 toward Fort Morgan without having to go through a tight hairpin loop ramp in use for decades.

Another project going ahead because of Ref C is early design work on reconstruction of the interchange of the Sixth Avenue Freeway and Wadsworth Boulevard in Lakewood.

Tom Norton, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, said he expects about $218 million of new funding before the end of June made possible by Ref C. Ref C allows the state to keep additional revenues that it otherwise would have to refund to taxpayers for the next five years.

Other projects

CDOT's metro-area work program also includes:

• Completion in October of the $35 million extension of 120th Avenue between Holly Street and U.S. 85, under way since 2003.

• Start of the $32 million project to separate the crossing of the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks over Wadsworth Boulevard at Grandview Avenue in Arvada.

• Completion in July of the $28 million final phase of the I-25 bridge replacement over Broadway. This bridge widening ties into the north end of T-REX and will allow eight lanes of traffic over Broadway.

• $6.6 million reconstruction of the I-25 interchange at Speer Boulevard, eliminating the two cloverleaf ramps on the west side of the freeway and replacing them with a large intersection and a frontage road for traffic headed to Invesco Field.