Motor Way bridge in south Colorado Springs to close for six months starting Monday

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Drivers and pedestrians who have endured detours and closures at the Interstate 25/South Nevada Avenue/South Tejon Street interchange now must prepare for another challenge.

On Monday, the bridge on Motor Way, between Nevada and Tejon, will close for six months so that crews can perform maintenance work.

The bridge is a heavily-used shortcut for traffic exiting southbound I-25 to Nevada, and is in the middle of a corridor safety and improvement project that started and May and continues through the end of the year.

Ryan Phipps, the city's capital improvements manager, said that the $1.2 million maintenance project will add 25 years to the useful life of the 20-year-old bridge over Cheyenne Creek.

"You'll notice that there's a pretty big bump approaching that bridge structure from the west," he explained. "So, we suspect that there's a void underneath the approach slab, which is the concrete pavement as you approach the bridge itself. And being proactive, and while we do have construction in the area, we are going to be doing some bridge maintenance in order to address that potential void and replace concrete where needed."

The city says that the bridge has a condition rating of six out of 9 -- putting it on the line between fair and good -- and that  that the best time to perform maintenance is while other construction is happening in the area.

To increase traffic capacity for drivers exiting south on I-25, to reach Nevada, crewsr also are adding a lane to the southbound connector road between the I-25 ramps a block north of Motor Way.; that requires upgrading the bridge on the connector road, as well.

The bulk of the corridor project is on schedule for completion by the end of the year.

"What we will start to see in the coming, you know, over the winter and spring of 2025, is we'll see work continue down South Nevada, Phipps said. "So, there's a number of projects that are in this area that are all being coordinated together, that are either city or state projects."

In one of those projects, the city will upgrade traffic signals at three South Nevada intersections --Brookside Street, Ramona Avenue and St. Elmo Avenue -- with a goal of installing them before a Colorado Department of Transportation paving project between Brookside and Fort Carson starts next year.

Another project will be to fill the many potholes in the corridor project area., something that drivers have complained about from the beginning.

For more information, visit: https://coloradosprings.gov/I25Ramps.