Drivers may see additional traffic impacts on Fridays and Saturdays at a widening project on Highway 9 between Frisco and Breckenridge, as crews work to make up lost time and complete the expansion of the road to four lanes by their Nov. 1 deadline.
The project will continue next summer, but local officials wanted to see two lanes in each direction completed by the time work stopped for the winter season.
But late snow this spring and other delays put the first phase of the project behind schedule. Colorado Department of Transportation engineers said their contractor is looking to work into the weekends to ensure the expansion is completed on time, which previously was prohibited due to increased traffic on Friday afternoons and Saturdays.
But Breckenridge officials opted for increasing work hours over having fewer lanes through the busier ski season.
“I think it’s more important to have four lanes open for the winter than to worry about a little bit of traffic inconvenience for the last of the summer,” Breckenridge manager Tim Gagen said at a joint meeting between CDOT and local officials Tuesday morning.
The work is causing regular traffic delays on Highway 9.
The widening project, underway on the three-mile stretch between Tiger Road and Agape Outpost Church, is part of an ongoing long-range plan to widen Hwy. 9 to two lanes in each direction between Breckenridge and Frisco.
The $8.4 million project will also include new bridge construction over the Blue River — where an aging culvert has been an object of concern for transportation officials — and a new roundabout at Fairview Boulevard, access improvements, new storm drainage, improved embankment and erosion control, according to a CDOT statement on the project.
“In addition to helping improve traffic flow through Summit County, widening the highway will provide safety benefits for the traveling public,” CDOT resident engineer Grant Anderson stated in the release. “When it’s completed traffic congestion and travel time will be reduced and there’ll be improved access to and from Hwy. 9.”
Courtesy of the Summit Daily News.
