State Highway 3 to Reopen this Saturday Morning

DURANGO - The most extensive rock fall mitigation project to date on State Highway (SH) 3 in Durango will be mostly complete this week. The contractor, TK Construction, is on track to finish all critical rock fall mitigation elements and move traffic barriers late Friday, December 19th (the last date, per contract, for keeping the road closed). Weather permitting, SH 3 will be open on Saturday morning, December 20th. If necessary, crews will finish any final work items outside of travel lanes after this week.

By closing SH 3, this rock fall safety project will be complete in one season. Typically, a rock fall project of this magnitude results in single-lane travel and full traffic stops, with delays of 30 minutes or more.

Since August 21, 2014, crews have completed rock scaling, removed more than 5,000 cubic yards of material, installed 743 rock anchors and have placed 38,000 square feet of protection netting.

Reopening SH 3 will again provide a parallel transportation corridor to US 160/550 and direct access from the south to businesses located along the roadway.

This project will reduce the risk of rock fall in this area, as well as provide measures to capture some material during future rock fall events.

The full project—contracted to TK Construction for $1.56 million*—also includes rock fall mitigation (to begin in spring 2015) on SH 145 just south of Telluride.

Questions? Comments?  The best way to stay up to date on CDOT project progress and impacts is to sign up for email and wireless (text) alerts. Go to CDOT’s web site at www.coloradodot.info and click on the green cell phone icon in the upper right hand corner of the page.

*This safety project is receiving funding from RAMP, Responsible Acceleration of Maintenance and Partnerships. RAMP is better coordinating project expenditures and available funding. Under the RAMP program, CDOT will fund multi-year projects based on year of expenditure, rather than saving for the full amount of a project before construction begins. For more information, including a list of RAMP project requests, please see our website: http://www.coloradodot.info/programs/RAMP.