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Jul 14, 2007 2:29 pm US/Mountain
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Most I-70 Jams Don't Have Many Out-Of-State Cars
Project I-70: Where Does All Of The Traffic Come From?
Written for the Web by Andrea Lopez
by Andrea Lopez
FRISCO, Colo. (CBS4) ―
On some of the most popular, winter weekends Interstate 70 usually transforms from a roadway sprinkled with trucks, commuters, locals and visitors into a massive sea of brake lights.
During some of the most congested travel times during the ski season, which have traditionally been Friday afternoons headed westbound and Sunday afternoons headed eastbound, every lane of the mountain corridor can contain cars and trucks that are either at a standstill or crawling along.
Often the surrounding frontage roads are also filled with a steady stream of people trying to cut back on wasted time by trying an alternate route that they often hope other drivers don't know about. People have shared their stories about being stuck in this traffic jam, often saying that it can take up to four hours to go from Summit County to Denver on a particularly congested weekend -- that's nearly four times as long as it would take when traffic wasn't backed up.
If you're wondering where all of the traffic comes from, the answer is from within our own state. The Colorado Department of Transportation did a traffic study in 2000. In its winter survey, it found that 47.8 percent of the traffic in Frisco (for example) came from the Denver area and the Front Range. People who live along the I-70 corridor made up 18.5 percent of the traffic, and out-of-state visitor accounted for 21 percent. People living in the outlying areas of Colorado made up anywhere from 2.8 percent to 3.5 percent of the winter traffic.
"During the peak times, the issues of I-70 are a Colorado phenomenon," said Jeff Kullman, the Region One Transportation Director for CDOT. "It's not the people from out-of-state who are causing the congestion during the peak times, it's us -- the people who live in Colorado and who want to recreate in the mountains."
"Well, I-70 is critical to accessing the resorts of Colorado," said Rob Perlman, President and CEO of Colorado Ski Country USA. "We just need to understand that we're contributing to the congestion problem and therefore we all need to contribute to the solutions."
Kullman said that the busiest times on the I-70 corridor are the weekends in March when spring break is happening and people come to the mountains for extended trips. He said the second busiest time for the corridor are the first two weekends in August when people are trying to get in last minute vacations before school starts back up in the fall. But CDOT is also finding that traffic and congestion are becoming more of a year-round problem, and that they're not necessarily specific to the weekends.
"What we're discovering is that the resorts no longer cater just to winter recreation," said Kullman. "As much as 30 percent to 40 percent of the economy in those localities is now occurring in the summer months. The congestion on Interstate 70 is getting progressively worse and what we're now seeing happen is, it's going into other days. It's not just a Saturday and Sunday issue. We're beginning to see Fridays, Thursdays and Monday become congested as well."
So far this year, the busiest month for the Eisenhower tunnel was the month of March with 1,139,124 vehicles passing through. January was the second busiest month with 991,809 vehicles. June came in third place with 989,398 vehicles. June was also the busiest in the tunnel's 34-year history. Every month to date has also seen a significant increase in traffic as compared to last year. The vehicles counts per month have been anywhere from 8,591 to 105,465 higher than in 2006. Kullman said this proves that higher gas prices are not affecting many people's decisions to travel to the mountains. The number of travelers is only expected to climb in the future.
"What we're seeing now is the average daily traffic at the Eisenhower tunnel is approaching 30,000 vehicles a day. That would jump to well above 40,000 in the year 2025 and the issue is, it will be 40,000 every day as opposed to the 30,000 that we see two days a week today."
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