CDOT stopped eastbound traffic from entering the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels Sunday afternoon and evening due to heavy traffic backing up into the tunnel. When this occurs, CDOT uses 20-minute traffic stops on the west side, which it calls “metering,” in order to prevent vehicles from standing idle inside the tunnel.

CDOT advises that due to observing very heavy traffic on Saturday heading westbound on Interstate 70, it is anticipating very heavy eastbound traffic Sunday and Monday on this holiday weekend.

The Summit County Citizens Voice reports that Colorado Department of Transportation officials have told Summit County commissioners that traffic stops at the Eisenhower Tunnel are for the safety of motorists, which is CDOT’s top priority.

Image from Google Earth looks east up the Straight Creek valley from over Silverthorne toward the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel complex. This is the grade where traffic was stopped seven times on Saturday.

Motorists crossing the Continental Divide at the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel on Interstate 70 may soon be getting more specific warnings about tunnel closures during heavy traffic, following Saturday’s record three hours of traffic stops to keep idling cars out of the tunnel.

The Colorado Department of Transportation is coming up with different wording for the overhead lighted signs called Variable Message Signs that would make drivers more aware that they might have to come to a stop on the highway while traffic jams ahead clear up.

When CDOT needs to shut off traffic flow through the tunnel, the message boards will be modified to say something like “20 minute traffic stops at tunnel; 4 hours+ to Denver,” said CDOT spokesman Bob Wilson.

The east portals of the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel on Interstate 70.

Blowing snow and resulting traffic backups on Interstate 70 on Saturday prompted seven separate stoppages totaling three hours at the westbound entrance to the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels under the Continental Divide.

It brought an avalanche of driver complaints and a review by the Colorado Department of Transportation of the messages it puts on its electronic signs.

But don’t expect the practice of halting traffic to end. It’s all about your safety.

“It’s very much to assure ourselves that we can respond to an emergency in there,” said Mike Salamon, CDOT’s superintendent at the tunnel. The 1.7-mile, two-lane bores have no shoulders and no way for emergency vehicles to maneuver around stopped cars. “How could anybody ever explain watching a ski bus burn in there and we couldn’t get to it? When traffic starts to fill up to about half the tunnel, we shut it down.”

A new record for August was set at the Eisenhower/Johnson Memorial Tunnels when 1,164,595 vehicles traveled under the Continental Divide. That’s 41,982 more vehicles than in August 2008.