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Work on I-70 May Cause Delays Thursday

They say in Colorado we have four seasons – fall, winter, spring and construction.  Since the latter is upon us, a couple of projects in the mountains are making travel a bit slower this week.

Work is continuing on U.S. 285 near Kenosha Pass.  Crews are stabilizing a mountain slope along the highway that was at risk of sliding down onto the roadway.  And traffic on eastbound I-70 may be slowed due to paving work Thursday. 

“Around the Eisenhower Tunnel we have a problem area where we’ve had problems with the soil and shifting,” says Colorado Department of Transportation Spokeswoman Stacey Stegman.

That shifting results in a large bump in the roadway. That causes issues with cars going over it and bottoming out, or slamming on their breaks or swerving to avoid it.

“We’ve fixed it a couple of times in the past, but we haven’t done a larger fix, these have been really short term repairs.  So that’s what we’re doing again,” says Stegman.

Work is expected to be done between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. Thursday, and only one lane at a time will be closed, though that is expected to cause delays.  A permanent fix to the problem has already been implemented in the same area on westbound I-70.  Stegman says $2.5 million has been set aside to fix the eastbound lanes in the fall of 2012.

You can sign up for e-mail and text alerts on road conditions: http://www.coloradodot.info/