Adam Prince’s blog, Sure Why Not, notes that there will be a lot of unhappy people in many states next month when the U.S. Department of Transportation announces winners of TIGER transportation infrastructure discretionary grants, a part of President Obama’s stimulus program.

In a chart accompanying Prince’s blog, Colorado is shown as having submitted 30 grant requests totaling just over $1.1 billion. They include a request for up to $200 million to begin the first phase of bus-car pool-toll lanes on U.S. 36, and a $62.5 million request for safety and improvement work on CO 119 near Black Hawk.

TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.

CO 119 into Black Hawk is a winding two-lane highway.

An eclectic partnership of agencies with broadly different agendas is working together on one multi-purpose project that addresses their divergent needs – transportation improvements and related road safety work on CO 119 into Black Hawk that will help start to clean a polluted creek dead from the leftovers of the mining industry and help preserve wildlife.

It’s called the North Clear Creek Restoration Project.

The complete package developed by the North Clear Creek Mitigation Advisory Committee is estimated to cost $82.7 million, and the Colorado Department of Transportation is taking a gamble that it can win a $62.5 million discretionary grant from the federal stimulus program to enable it to do the entire project at once.

Colorado Department of Transportation maintenance crews will pave two segments of CO 119 downhill from Black Hawk on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, necessitating some traffic delays. Weather permitting, the work will take place between mileposts 3 to 4.1. That’s a stretch that’s just about halfway between the U.S. 6 junction and Black Hawk.