Heads up, drivers: the Colorado Department of Transportation is rolling out lane closures along Interstate 25 this week for some finishing touches on the MAMSIP I-25 Safety and Efficiency Improvements project. Expect crews busily removing temporary barriers, grooving concrete, and fixing guard rails from Tuesday night through Wednesday. To accommodate this work, there will be a lane closure on the northbound left side come Tuesday, and southbound lanes will see some action, too. These changes will happen in the dark hours for all the nightly commuters, kicking off at 8 p.m. and running until the early morning light at 5 a.m.
If you frequent South Academy Boulevard, you'll want to brace yourself for some shifting terrain. The road is hunkering down to its center between I-25 and Fountain Creek—which you can expect to stay that way until the blossoms of spring 2025. This change aims to give workers the space they to need really get in there and widen those lanes, update drainage, and throw up a sound barrier to keep things hush. The northbound I-25 off-ramp at South Academy is getting re-aligned too with an all-new, albeit shorter, acceleration lane. So, be prepared to merge as you've never before because ramp space got more precious, particularly at the US 85/87 on-ramp to eastbound South Academy and the Bradley Road on-ramp.
Traffic impacts will be palpable across various points of I-25, notably between US 85/Fountain and South Academy Boulevard. Specific lane closures to watch out for include the right lane between mileposts 128 and 129 and at milepost 133 northbound on Tuesday night and a stretch from milepost 129 to 127.5 southbound on Wednesday evening. The South Academy Boulevard Widening Project is also shaking things up with ongoing lane realignments and bridge construction that'll be part of our driving landscape well into early 2026. The full closure of existing North and South on-ramps from US 85/87 has been rerouted to a temporary path until fall 2024.
The whole shebang is aimed at boosting safety and smoothing out traffic flow, as a State of Colorado report pointed out. This infrastructure overhaul is designed to reduce crashes and casualties by addressing the physical deficiencies that contribute to them. And for the stat buffs out there, CDOT crunched the numbers to show that these changes could mean a safer road over the next couple of decades. To stay up to speed with closures and cautions, dial into CDOT's resources like COtrip.org, and maybe throw on their COtrip Planner app for live updates on your mobile device.
