$2.6 million traffic safety project at north Fountain intersection nears halfway point

FOUNTAIN, Colo. (KRDO) -- Colorado Department of Transportation crews (CDOT) are entering the third month of a project to install traffic signals at the intersection of Highway 85/87 and Carson Boulevard.

The work also covers a half-mile north and south of that intersection, between Fontaine Boulevard and Allegre Street.

It's being done partly to help improve traffic flow through a neighborhood to the west affected by the 2020 closing of a section of Southmoor Drive, due to erosion concerns.

Crews are widening the mile-long stretch by paving the highway shoulders, adding raised center medians to provide protected turn lanes and installing traffic signals at the intersection.

The entire stretch will receive a badly-needed repaving job, as well.

The project will eliminate left turns from Carson Boulevard onto the highway.

That doesn't please a nearby business owner who spoke with KRDO 13's The Road Warrior before the project began.

"We make our money in the summer and use it to survive the winter," said Phillip Rash, owner of a nearby Dairy Queen store since 1975. "They're going to do this for possibly the next (few) months, I understand? That's going to be a little rough on my store and for my people. I'll probably having to end up laying some people off."

Rash also disputes that a high number of broadside, or T-bone crashes, at the intersection are another reason for the project.

"The state told me that the city of Fountain contacted them and said that there were too many accidents at this intersection," he recalled. "I think maybe they mean the whole road from Mesa Ridge (Parkway) to Fontaine, because there hasn't been 220-something accidents as long as I've been here, that I've seen."

CDOT expects to finish the project in January.