Shops and motels got a bump from a near doubling in traffic, local officials said. This is testimony to the economic impact of transportation infrastructure on the community.

Go to the Craig Daily Press to see the entire article.

CDOT photo shows the old steel truss bridge on US 34 in Big Thompson Canyon while it was being dismantled last week. The new bridge opened Thursday night, four days ahead of schedule.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

SEMA Construction once again completed the replacement of an aging steel truss bridge on U.S. 34 in Big Thompson Canyon four days ahead of schedule, reopening the major route between Estes Park and Loveland Thursday night – and completing the $3.8 million project.

SEMA replaced two bridges, including one that was the single poorest rated bridge on the state highway system (see photo of old bridge here), during two separate closures of U.S. 34 that were supposed to last 12 days each but wrapped up in eight.

“This is a huge accomplishment as it usually takes months to replace a bridge, but by prefabricating much of the new bridge and working nearly 24 hours a day, we were able to complete the new bridges ahead of schedule,” said Scott Ellis, resident engineer for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The bridge that was completed Thursday is the downstream one of the pair. The upstream bridge was replaced in February. During the two closures, CDOT had recommended a route through Lyons via CO 66, with a net difference in distance of 16 miles between Loveland and Estes Park.

While the two bridges are structurally complete and available for traffic, SEMA still has minor work over the coming months to wrap up the project. It still has some drainage structures to install and asphalt paving to complete, which cannot occur until the weather gets warmer. It also has some guard rail installation to finish.

When that work starts, motorists will encounter some single-lane alternating traffic at the work sites, but no full closure.

The upper bridge that was replaced was rated 6 on a scale of 100 for structural deficiency, the lowest on CDOT’s list of bridges needing to be replaced – and the only one rated in single digits. Its companion downstream was rated 34. Both bridges were built in 1937 and were the last two remaining steel truss bridges in the canyon. U.S. 34 crosses 11 bridges in the canyon.

CDOT started the year with 124 poor-rated bridges on its system. Many of them will be replaced with revenue from the FASTER bill passed last year that levied new bridge and road safety user fees on vehicle registrations to dedicate to the work. The U.S. 34 bridges were replaced, however, with regular CDOT funding allocations.

Check out the map below to see all of the bridges on the poor-rated list. Click on the blue balloons to see each bridge, complete with pictures and descriptions including year of construction and where each bridge stands in the replacement process.

View Colorado’s Poor-Rated State Highway Bridges in a larger map

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

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 Colorado Department of Transportation imposed a 14-foot limit on vehicle widths during the temporary two-lane restriction. That is because of curvature and narrowed lanes that will be in place until the bridge deck, damaged by numerous boulders including one weighing 66 tons, can be fully repaired over the next few months.

It also temporarily lowered the speed limit to 40 mph.

“CDOT wants to thank motorists and impacted communities for their patience during this time. More information to come tomorrow afternoon on repair plans,” the department said in a statement announcing the reopening.

The emergency started early Monday morning, just after midnight Sunday, when large rocks came down onto the I-70 viaduct west of the ramps to and from the Hanging Lake Rest Area. The slide punctured about a half dozen holes and divots in the bridge deck. At this location, the highway is up against the north wall of the canyon but is elevated on a the viaduct as it curves eastward toward the twin portals of Hanging Lake Tunnels across the Colorado River on the south side of the canyon.

The highway crosses the Colorado River and Union Pacific Railroad, just west of the Shoshone Dam. The debris was scattered over about a 300-foot length of highway.

Traffic moves on I-70 through the rockslide area in Glenwood Canyon Thursday afternoon, after a four-day closure. CDOT photo.

The lengthy closure was made longer by the discovery that another huge boulder, 20 feet in diameter, was perched precariously on the north canyon wall in the slide chute. That made it necessary for CDOT to get the boulder removed and scale off the rest of the loose rock.

That was done Wednesday around sunset, and it worked well for CDOT. The blast not only broke up the boulder into smaller rocks of insufficient mass to inflict more damage on the bridge deck below; it also brought down almost all of the remaining loose rock CDOT had to remove, eliminating the need for extensive follow-up on picking and scaling the canyon wall.

Gov. Bill Ritter declared the situation a disaster on Monday, allowing the state to go after assistance from the Federal Highway Administration to help pay for repairs.

It is close to the same area where an early morning Thanksgiving rockslide in 2004 did much the same type of damage. Then, CDOT was able to get two lanes of traffic reopened in 31 hours but it had to restrict long trailer trucks for two months while full repairs were made and all four lanes reopened.

In this case, the bridge deck damage was more significant and extends into the eastbound lanes, making it more difficult to use them as a detour. CDOT plans to use emergency contracting to hire a company to make the full repairs.

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.

There is a short story about the project below the slide show.

Hampden Bridge Project at Federal from K J Flynn on Vimeo.

You can view a slideshow of the work. The photos were taken on Friday, March 5.

To expand to full screen and read the captions, first click on the “play” button and then click on the box that will appear at the lower right corner — with the four little arrows pointing outward. When the full screen appears, click on “Show Info” at the menu bar on the top right.

The team of Concrete Express Inc. and Tsiouvaras Simmons and Holderness is doing the work. With construction at Federal well underway, crews will next start in on the Wadsworth Boulevard bridge replacement. The Pierce Street structure also will be replaced. Hampden will be rebuilt in concrete except for the western one-mile portion, which will be asphalt. The portions of the median that are now grass will be paved over with a center concrete barrier, similar to the segment between Knox Court and Sheridan Boulevard, to widen the roadway. It will remain striped for four lanes rather than six, however.

Under the design-build method of project delivery, the Colorado Department of Transportation establishes the scope and goals of the program and provides early design work, to the 30 percent level. It then puts the program on the market and, instead of taking the lowest bidder as in the traditional design-bid-build model, it looks for the team that brings the best value to the project. The winning team completes both the design and the construction, and savings it finds go to fund the options that are added.

When used in the right projects, design-build can help stretch scarce transportation dollars, which don’t go as far as they used to.

Read more here about the project at CDOT’s web site.

The Concrete Express/TSH team proposed several additions to the scope including reconstruction of four miles, toward Kipling Street, instead of just three miles. It did that by using less expensive methods on the bridge reconstructions – using clear-span structures to make the three crossings without center piers – and plowed the savigns into added scope for the project.

Design-build is how CDOT and the Regional Transportation District did the $1.75 billion T-REX reconstruction of Interstate 25 and 225, with new lanes and light rail. This is the largest project CDOT has done with this method since then.

Hampden Avenue was once State Highway 70. It ran west out of Englewood, across the South Platte River on an older bridge near the old Cinderella Twin Drive-In and through Sheridan until it detoured south on Lowell then west on Kenyon Avenue, on the north side of Fort Logan National Cemetery to Sheridan Boulevard. It then went straight west to Morrison.

The plan early on was to make Hampden across-town freeway along the south metro suburbs to Interstate 25. Work began on grade separations at major intersections. The bypass under Broadway in Englewood was first, in 1955. A new bridge across the Platte was done in 1960 – upgraded in 1985 – and the intersection at Federal was grade-separated in 1961 with a new alignment parallel to Old Hampden. Raleigh Street and Sheridan Boulevard were bridged a year later, with Pierce and Wadsworth grade-separated in 1964.

Kipling Street was bridged in 1967. By this time, plans to make Hampden a full freeway across town were in the mix with the proposed partial beltway, Interstate 470. After Gov. Richard Lamm campaigned against the beltway, the state formed a commission to study transportation in the southwest metro area.

An alternative to I-470 in that 1975 study was to use Hampden as a freeway instead. One alignment had traffic coming from Interstate 70 on a diagonal to Hampden and Simms Street, then east to I-25. Another used I-70 to Sixth Avenue, then on a freeway connection down Kipling Street to Hampden and east.

Another alternative had the freeway running along Belleview Avenue.

Those were rejected in favor of today’s C-470, on the same alignment as the defunct I-470.

You can read about the brouhaha over I-470 and southwest metro freeway alignments at Matt Salek’s Highways of Colorado web site.

Some RTD bus service will be temporarily interrupted due to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Saturday, March 13, 2010, starting at 9:30 a.m.

Denver – A portion of the Regional Transportation District (RTD) normal bus service will be interrupted in downtown Denver for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Saturday, March 13. The parade will start and end at Coors Field and is expected to last approximately 4 hours. The interrupted service is expected to start at 9:30 a.m. RTD will experience detours on portions of the following bus routes:

• Route 1, Route AF westbound

• Route 6, Route 20, Route 28, Route 32, Route 44 eastbound

• Route 38, Route 52 westbound and eastbound

• Route 12 northbound

• Route 8 northbound and southbound

The buses on these routes will continue running during the parade. Riders can expect to add a few minutes to their travel time because of the detours.

For route and schedule information, please call RTD’s Telephone Information Center at 303.299.6000. Call 303.299.6089 for the speech and hearing impaired. Visit RTD’s website at RTD-Denver.com.

It’s too soon to tell how much it will cost to repair damage or how long it will take to fix it, CDOT officials said. Wednesday. But they are drawing up designs for the repair work to get out to bid. A 2004 rockslide in the same area cost a total of $1.2 million to repair.

Go to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel to see the entire article.

“With no significant action on highway improvements expected for six more years and no high-speed rail solution until 2020 at the earliest, local and state officials are looking into short-term (I-70) solutions…” according to a press release from organizer Our Future Summit.

The discussion is to address bills recently proposed at the Capitol to help alleviate traffic problems in the short-term.

Go to the Summit Daily to read the entire article.

Two bills making changes to the fees, sponsored by Democrats, have gone forward.

Go to the Denver Business Journal to read the entire article.

Aerial view shows the Northwest Rail corridor looking southwest from Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont to Boulder. Courtesy RTD.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

The FasTracks Northwest Rail corridor could get a head start under a plan that would build its first six and a half miles, between Denver Union Station and south Westminster at 72nd and Lowell Boulevard, as part of the construction of lines to the airport and Arvada.

That will give RTD the capability of initiating rail transit service to southwest Adams County and Westminster sooner rather than later.

Northwest Rail, FasTracks’ longest and costliest-per-rider rail corridor, is one of four new rail corridors in the program that is facing the possibility of significant delay because of the economic crisis that has drained the FasTracks budget.

But RTD’s efforts at privatizing the next two corridors – East Corridor to Denver International Airport and the Gold Line to Arvada-Wheat Ridge – to help close that $2.45 billion budget gap includes a component that would extend the Northwest Rail as an electrified heavy-rail commuter corridor up into southwest Adams County.

The 'Town Center' theme for Northwest Rail stations is one of several design options outlined in the environmental study. RTD rendering.

The $665.2 million, 41-mile Northwest Rail corridor goes between downtown Denver and Longmont along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway line that passes through Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville and Boulder. Northwest of 72nd and Lowell, RTD plans to operate jointly with BNSF freight trains – although they would run at different times – along a new double track section all the way to Longmont.

RTD simulation shows the larger heavy-rail electric commuter rail cars along Grandview Avenue in Arvada. Different than light rail cars, these are proposed for use on the Gold Line and East Corridor.

Self-propelled diesel-powered passeneger cars such as this would be used on the full Northwest Rail corridor. Courtesy RTD.

This phasing, along with other details of the Northwest Rail project, are up for public meetings tonight and next week as part of the environmental study process all FasTracks corridors have gone through.

You can read through the environmental documents here.

The first public meeting on the Northwest Rail Environmental Evaluation is set for tonight in the Longmont Civic Center, 350 Kimbark St. Using an open house format in which you can go from station to station and get your questions answered individually, the public can attend any time between 6 and 8:30 p.m.

However, 6:30 to 7:30, there will be a more formal presentation by RTD’s project manager for Northwest Rail, Chris Quinn, followed by a question and answer session

The meetings next week will be at the same times on Wednesday, March 17, in the Louisville Middle School, 1341 Main St., and Thursday, March 18, in Hodgkins Elementary School, 3475 West 67th Ave., Adams County.

RTD rendering shows the site plan for the Westminster Station on Northwest Rail, which would be on the end of the first phase segment.

The Eagle P3 project is an innovative approach to delivering the transit corridors in a challenging economic environment. The East Corridor will serve Denver International Airport through northeast Denver and Aurora, and the Gold Line serves Arvada and Wheat Ridge, all from Union Station. By selecting a concessionaire to finance, develop and operate those corridors, RTD is able to spread out its payments over the 40-year life of the contract and lower the amount of capital it needs upfront to complete FasTracks.

It takes the design-build project delivery process used successfully in the T-REX project a few steps further by also including privatization of upfront financing and back-end operations and maintenance. RTD would maintain control of such things as schedule, fares, maintenance standards and such through the master concession agreement. On a smaller scale, RTD already privatizes about half of its existing bus service in the same way.

Northwest Rail is Unique in FasTracks in that it is the only corridor that would share the same tracks with operating freight trains. As such, RTD and BNSF need to come up with a formal operating agreement that would make BNSF the contractor for the improvements to its own tracks.

Eagle P3 already gives Northwest Rail a leg up because the concessionaire would build the Gold Line tracks and shared stations on the Gold Line out of Union Station to Pecos Junction at 61st and Pecos. From there, it is only another two and a quarter miles to where the electrified portion of Northwest Rail would end, around Bradburn Boulevard and 72nd Avenue.

The corridor is planned to have 11 stations along its own exclusive alignment. In addition, it shares two stations – at 41st Avenue and Fox Street in north Denver and at 61st Avenue and Pecos Street in southwest Adams County – with the Gold Line.

FasTracks-funded stations include the south Westminster station at 72nd and Lowell, Walnut Creek in Westminster, Flatiron in Broomfield, Downtown Louisville, Boulder Transit Village, Gunbarrel and Downtown Longmont.

Four other proposed stations are not funded under FasTracks, but would need to be funded by third parties. They are Westminster/88th Avenue, Broomfield/116th Avenue, East Boulder and Twin Peaks in Longmont.

Here is a map showing the entire Northwest Rail Corridor: