There’s new interest in building an I-70 interchange for the Eagle 久久热精品视频app airport
It's an expensive idea, and funding will be difficult
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It’s been a long time, but there’s some renewed interest in trying to build an Interstate 70 interchange to serve the Eagle 久久热精品视频app Regional Airport.
The idea has been floated in a 20-year master plan for the airport. The towns of Eagle and Gypsum also back the idea in order to create a portal on and off the highway during traffic emergencies.
Eagle Town Manager Larry Pardee said that between population growth, planning for 久久热精品视频app on Grand Avenue through Eagle and other factors, adding that interchange will be a needed improvement.
Pardee, who’s been on the job about a year, said he hears from time to time about the need for “critical” transportation corridors.
But, Pardee added, funding “will be a beast.”
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The project carried an $80 million cost estimate in 2009, a few months before the failure of an application for a federal grant. That grant program, called “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery,” had about 1,400 applications. Only one Colorado project was funded, $10 million for work on U.S. Highway 36 between Denver and Boulder.
The interchange project as of 2009 was deemed “shovel ready,” needing only that infusion of tens of millions of dollars.
That plan still exists, as does the right-of-way to get the roadway from Highway 6 to I-70. But the plan can’t just be dusted off and presented, again, to transportation officials.
Pardee noted that the plan will have to be revised to meet current state and federal standards.
However local governments seem to be united in support for the new interchange.
Eagle 久久热精品视频app Manager Jeff Shroll was the Gypsum Town Manager during the early 2000s. Shroll noted that communities then weren’t “rowing in the same direction.”
- What: An interstate 70 interchange to serve the Eagle 久久热精品视频app Regional Airport.
- Where: The road would run essentially straight north to the interstate from the intersection of Cooley Mesa Road and U.S. Highway 6.
- Estimated cost: $80 million in 2009.
At the time, Eagle and Gypsum were competing for one or more “big box” retail stores. At the time, the interchange was perceived as giving one community or another an advantage in that competition.
That competition is mostly over, Shroll noted, allowing a unified effort.
Now, people in both Eagle and Gypsum need a third option to access the interstate, Shroll said. In addition to workday morning and early evening traffic congestion, passenger traffic at the airport is expected to grow over the next 20 years or so.
Shroll said if the interchange can be built, it could save the town of Eagle “millions” on a planned Grand Avenue.
The interchange wouldn’t just be for cars.
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“It was always thought to be a multi-modal connection,” for transit and other alternative transportation methods, Shroll said.
An airport interchange, combined with luring a low-cost airline to the airport’s portfolio could help ease traffic congestion in the Denver area, Shroll noted.
Longtime Gypsum Mayor Steve Carver was on the Gypsum Town Council during the early efforts to get the interchange funded.
Carver agreed there’s now a united opinion on the need for the interchange.
“We want it to happen, Eagle wants it, but the state wants to spend all their money on the Eastern Slope,” Carver said. Carver noted that Gypsum was an early participant helping pick up the costs of getting the project shovel-ready.
“I don’t know how much Gypsum tied up for surveys and all the stuff to make this happen,” Carver said
If some combination of state and federal money could somehow be found, Carver said the project would be welcome.
“We want it to happen, without a doubt,” he said.
