State transportation operators this week scanned nearly 50 screens showing vehicles crawling along highways like bugs — bracing for a holiday surge over the next three weeks that almost certainly will bring out drivers who can’t handle mountain winter conditions.
The Colorado Department of Transportation increasingly focuses on traffic flow, and surveillance capacity at its Golden operations center has doubled in recent years, with links to more cameras installed along highways statewide.
Crews at CDOT’s center can also connect by phone with drivers inside nearly 900 snowplows. Beyond clearing snow, these $400,000 orange behemoths serve as mobile command posts in some of the gnarliest storms.
CDOT officials gathered on Wednesday at the operations center in Golden to review ramped-up winter readiness plans with the mission of reducing spin-outs, crashes and delays.
What drivers face is unique — an Interstate 70 that leads into a climate and elevation shift more abrupt than on any other interstate highway. I-70 rises from Denver International Airport, at 5,430 feet of elevation, to the Eisenhower Tunnel, at 11,200 feet.
That shift flummoxes enough drivers to disrupt the flows. John Lorme, CDOT’s director of maintenance and operations, said the core problem is that visitors leaving DIA — and newcomer residents from balmier regions — assume that entering an interstate guarantees clear sailing, as it might in North Carolina and Florida.
In December 2023, CDOT counted 1,068,736 vehicles rolling through the Eisenhower tunnel. Traction law violations that month led to 60 traffic backups and 208 hours of delay.
CDOT analysts have calculated that one hour of delay along I-70 causes $1.6 million in economic losses. They project a daily flow on I-70 of 57,000 vehicles, many of them big freight trucks.
The agency’s studies of traffic flows show that for every minute a vehicle blocks traffic, it will require four minutes to regain normal flow.
“It is extremely important to keep the highways open and moving,” especially on I-70 west of Denver, said Bob Fifer, the deputy director of operations. “If that corridor is closed, it creates a ripple effect for the state.”
Hazards around western Colorado include potentially catastrophic snow slides slumping across roads. “There are over 500 avalanche paths statewide that are adjacent to our highways,” CDOT avalanche program manager Brian Gorsage said.
When trouble hits, CDOT supervisors increasingly have favored “safety closures” to enable swift cleanups in recent years, CDOT executive director Shoshana Lew said.
“We find that doing that intentionally protects people,” Lew said. “In the long run, these safety closures decrease delay time.”
Colorado State Patrol troopers are mobilizing, too.
Based on troopers’ wide coverage and years of observing driver behavior, Lt. Col. Brandon Means said, three main causes of crashes stand out: speeding too fast for the conditions, following too closely and distracted driving.
Make sure tires have sufficient tread, keep gas tanks at least half full and carry replacement windshield wiper fluid, Means said.
When CDOT activates the traction law along a highway, drivers that aren’t in four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicles must have tires with a winter, all-weather or mud/snow designation or carry traction devices like chains. The minimum tread depth on any tires is three-sixteenths of an inch. The traction law is always in effect on I-70 in the mountains from September through May.
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Starting on Jan. 1, handling a cell phone while driving will be illegal under a new state law.
Colorado’s law requiring drivers to move over to a different lane when they see police or accident response crews alongside a highway also applies for those who have broken down and pulled over, Means said. If traffic’s too thick and the left lane is clogged, he said, “reduce your speed by at least 20 miles per hour.”
AAA tow truck contractors also are ready, and attuned to the clueless driver dynamic. AAA officials monitored the latest vehicle car rental company data and found rentals at DIA this month will exceed those at any other airport as skiers and other visitors converge, AAA regional spokesman Skyler McKinley said.
“You’re going to be sharing the roads with drivers who aren’t familiar with our driving conditions,” McKinley said. “AAA is going to pull a lot of their vehicles out of ditches — most of them (there) because the drivers were going too fast for the conditions.”
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