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 Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports that CDOT will dip into its contingency fund that is set up to handle emergencies in order to cover costs stemming from the Glenwood Canyon rockslide on Interstate 70. 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.

The Summit Daily reports that Interstate 70 congestion, the Dillon Dam Road and local transit operations are up for discussion tonight at a public meeting in the Summit County Community and Senior Center.

“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.

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.

CDOT says the current plan for closed I-70 through Glenwood Canyon is to repair a large hole in the eastbound structure, then reopen it to one lane in each direction. That would allow traffic to resume while repairs are made on the larger hole in the westbound structure.

The Vail Daily reports that the I-70 closure due to the Glenwood Canyon rockslide has generated several requests that Eagle County open Cottonwood Pass to thru traffic. While it does appear on local maps, the gravel road is not maintained for winter travel.

According to Brad Higgins, Eagle County’s Director of Road and Bridge, Cottonwood Pass, which connects Gypsum to Cattle Creek south of Glenwood Springs, closes every winter from the end of November until mid-April. “Cottonwood Pass has never been maintained in the winter, nor is it designed to handle a high volume of vehicles, so to simply open it to traffic is not an option,” said Higgins.

Go to the Vail Daily to see the entire item.

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.

The Vail Daily reports that Sen. Dan Gibbs wants to improve Interstate 70 mountain traffic flow by keeping large commercial trucks out of the fast lane on steeper grades.

Three West Slope transportation projects are going forward with new funding from revenues the state gets from commercial leases of federal lands for energy production. Road projects in Parachute, Grand Junction and Delta are sharing a $17 million pool of federal mineral leasing funds with a fourth project that will extend broadband communications lines in southwest Colorado.

Starting at midnight on Friday night, weather permitting, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) will completely close the ramp from eastbound I-270 to I-70 for paving operations. The ramp will reopen by 5:30 a.m. on Monday.