Work on Interstate 25 went well Friday night and early Saturday during the first phase of the weekend marathon of lane-widening, asphalt-pouring, sewer pipe-laying and bridge demolition, according to state and Denver city officials.
Work resumes at 10 p.m. Saturday and the highway will remain closed between Santa Fe Drive and the U.S. 6 interchange until 5 a.m. Monday.
Lane closures begin at 9 p.m.
Approximately 3,000 tons of asphalt were put down Friday night and early Saturday, which will add a fourth lane to northbound I-25 between Alameda and 6th Avenue.
Another 4,000 tons are expected to be put in place Saturday night and Sunday.
The new lane is part of CDOT’s $4 million “Gap Project” which is designed to lessen congestion on northbound I-25.
“We really have been happy with the progress,” said CDOT spokeswoman Amy Ford. “Overall it was excellent progress over night and we expect the same over Sunday.”
However, Ford reiterated a warning to the traveling public: “Please stay out of the area.”
“The detours are there. They have worked really well,” said Ford.
Ford said CDOT’s incident command has been working in partnership with the city.
“We had people manning the lights on the Denver streets in person to make sure things were flowing well.” she said..
“We had public works crews there, actually manually doing the lights to make sure the flow of traffic was what it needed to be on these streets and routes.”
Nancy Kuhn, spokeswoman for the Denver Department of Public Works, said that public works is expanding operations in its traffic management center during the closure.
“We had two people working Friday night during the closure window,” said Kuhn. “On Sunday, we’ll have four staff members monitoring detours and alternate routes, identifying and evaluating trouble spots in the network, and looking for opportunities to mitigate congestion impact.”
Kuhn said that on Friday night the public works department implemented a traffic signal timing pattern along Santa Fe that is used in higher volume situations.
“The traffic signal timing we implemented and the positioning of uniform traffic control at key intersections worked well,” she said. “We saw no major issues on the local roads.”
Ford said that 100 CDOT and contractor workers worked the project Friday night.
Previously there were three lanes on the highway. The added fourth lane, she said, will help generate better traffic flow.
In addition to pouring the asphalt Friday night and Saturday morning, construction crews were able to hang girders for the new west bound off-ramp from I-25 to U.S. 6. Also, the I-25 roadway was cut Friday night so storm sewer pipes can be placed beneath the roadway.
On Saturday night. the northbound side of the 6th Avenue bridge that goes over I-25 will be demolished. However, that demolition will not affect traffic on 6th Avenue, said Ford.
“So just an incredible amount of work is being done in this compressed period,” said Ford.
Ford said that the southbound lanes of I-25 were open shortly after 6 a.m. Saturday while all lanes were opened about 10 a.m. on the northbound side.
Ford said that the compressed work actually involves two different projects — the “gap lane” on I-25 and the large project on U.S. 6 where many bridges are being reconstructed.
Ford said that the new fourth lane on I-25 is not permanent.
“It is not a permanent fourth lane. The Federal Highway Administration recognized we had quite a bit of congestion. We needed an immediate fix and so they’ve allotted us just enough pavement out there to basically narrow the lanes just slightly and get a fourth lane through the area,”she said.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939, hpankratz@denverpost.com or twitter.com/howardpankratz
