Section of South Academy Boulevard near Colorado Springs to close all day Saturday
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Drivers running errands or traveling Saturday through the south end of South Academy Boulevard will have to detour around a day-long southbound closure between Bradley Road and Highway 85/87.
The closure, from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m., allows crews to move safety barriers into place for improvement work on the South Academy overpass at the highway.
It's the latest in a continuing series of closures, lane shifts and other traffic changes in the $60 million widening of the boulevard, covering 1.5 miles between Milton E. Proby Parkway and Interstate 25.
In another change this week, the boulevard's southbound exit ramp to Coventry Drive was scheduled to be closed Wednesday through Friday afternoon, as crews finish installing sound walls along both sides of the Stratmoor Valley neighborhood along the boulevard.
The sound wall work has been occasionally delayed because of snow or extremely cold temperatures, but project manager Brett Hartzell said that it should be finished by the end of the month.
He said that weather hasn't been the only challenge.
"There's a lot of complications with utilities," he explained. "We do a lot of potholing where we know where the posts will go. But sometimes, you find utilities in between those. So, that makes us have to go back to the drawing board."
Hartzell added that the utilities found have been communications and electric lines -- active and inactive -- that required relocation or removal.
On Wednesday, crews closed an interior southbound lane of the boulevard over the Bradley overpass so that they could poor concrete; lane construction and drainage pipe installation is scheduled to continue into spring.
Officials advise drivers to be careful when entering or exiting the ramps along the boulevard because construction has significantly shortened those ramps; the situation may require drivers to stop briefly at the northbound boulevard on-ramp to the highway.
Drivers can detour around the closure by taking Bradley, the highway and Main Street, all through the Security-Widefield area; however, all lanes of Bradley under boulevard overpass are shifted to the center so that crews can continue work on new bridge piers.
The widening project started in the summer of 2023 and has an expected completion date of early next year.
"The project overall is at around 60% (completion)," Hartzell said. "A lot of the bridge work is done. Not all of it. There's still some work to the bridges over 85 and the railroad. The (Fountain Creek) bridge scour work we were doing, most of that is now complete. Now, we've been widening the road."
