Monument area to feel impacts of I-25 Gap project

The Colorado Department of Transportation held a media briefing Tuesday about upcoming traffic impacts to the Monument area from the Interstate 25 “Gap” widening project.

CDOT discussed how construction will affect the project’s southern end, a 7-mile stretch of the highway, between Greenland in Douglas County and Monument in El Paso County.

“The first thing that people will see will be the concrete barriers,” said Tamara Rollison, a CDOT spokeswoman. “Those will go up and that will separate traffic from the construction zone. We’re on schedule with what we anticipated to start the south section of the project. But we do have to be mindful of the weather and make changes accordingly.”

In several locations along the project, equipment and supplies have been placed in preparation for the additional work.

Project impacts will include wider shoulders, five new wildlife crossings, a rebuilding of the Greenland interchange and new entrance/exit ramps at County Line Road.

“The wildlife crossings will go under the highway and require some temporary lane closures,” Rollison said.

Some construction of express lanes that are part of the project will occur in that area.

Drivers also should expect narrow lanes and shoulders, extended ramp closures at Greenland, County Line and Monument Hill roads, and a slower speed limit of 65.

Construction on the $350 million project’s northern end, near Castle Rock, started last fall.

“The middle section will be the hardest because we’ll have to replace several bridges there,” Rollison said. “We’ll start on that this summer and that will give us an 18-mile-long work zone, the longest in state history.”

Rollison said the project to widen the highway to three lanes in each direction — including an express toll lane in each direction — should be finished by the middle of 2022.

Some lanes of I-25 had to be briefly closed last week because of emergency pothole repair. It caused massive traffic backups, but Rollison said it wasn’t a surprise, given the age and condition of the highway.

An unexpected development during construction, she said, is the number of drivers who have pulled over onto emergency shoulders for no apparent reason.

“With the narrower lanes and limited shoulders, there’s not a lot of room for drivers,” Rollison said. “We’re asking people to avoid doing that. We hope they won’t on the Monument end. Monument Hill and the high elevation make construction and driving enough of a challenge already.”

CDOT’s safety patrol and state troopers will be in construction areas more frequently, she said.