Save the last dance for me! Denver, the city that popularized the pedestrian-friendly all-walk diagonal-crossing Barnes Dance, is considering phasing it out of the busy downtown grid as part of a larger evaluation of signal timing within the central business district.

A total of $25.3 million in state highway projects funded by the FASTER program is in CDOT’s pipeline, including replacement of four wooden bridges along a state highway where volunteer firefighters died in 2008 crossing where a fifth wooden bridge had been destroyed in a wildfire.

The speed limit on South Santa Fe Drive’s expressway segment has long been under-posted at 45 mph. Most of the time outside rush hours, that seemed to be the slowest any driver went. Including the police. But now, the Colorado Department of Transportation is expected to raise the limit to 55 mph, reflecting what the traffic already is safely doing. The change would be in the 4½-mile segment between Iowa and Belleview avenues, passing through Denver, Englewood and Sheridan.

More than $390 million in road construction projects on state highways will be underway this year in the metro Denver area, with more than a third of the total funded by the federal stimulus program.

Vehicle registrations in Colorado took a slight drop in January compared with three months earlier – a statistic that’s in line with coming up short on revenue in the FASTER program – and trailer registrations account for 30 percent of the decline. State figures for total registrations showed 5,067,035 license plates registered in Colorado as of Jan. 31. That is 37,056 fewer than were registered three months earlier, as of Oct. 31.

The low bidder on the first bridge replacement project funded by the FASTER bill’s increase in vehicle registration fees was the one closest to the job. Walsenburg Sand and Gravel Co. bid $1,837,111 to replace the bridge over Turkey Creek on CO 69 near Farisita. The project includes realignment of a half mile of the highway at the bridge. Walsenburg and Farisita are both in Huerfano County.

Where jetliners used to cross Interstate 70, Denver soon will be building a new $50.6 million interchange project that will reunite the south side of the old Stapleton airfield with the north side. But this time, it’s not 747s or DC-10s that will go over top of I-70 traffic, but Stapleton neighborhood residents, regional shoppers and other highway travelers.

Interstate 70 reopened to traffic around 3 p.m. Thursday for the first time in four days through Glenwood Canyon, with CDOT clearing one lane in each direction through the area damaged by a rockslide early Monday morning.

The dirt is starting to move in the $40.1 million design-build reconstruction of four miles along Hampden Avenue, starting at the east end of the corridor with replacement of the bridge over Federal Boulevard. Inside Lane takes you on a tour of the job with this video featuring the project managers, plus a slide show.

The Colorado Department of Transportation says it will reopen two lanes of Interstate 70 through the damaged rockslide area in Glenwood Canyon by the end of the day Thursday after geologists blasted down a huge boulder and surrounding rock that threatened to fall onto the highway.