Freeway site visitors is busy lately, however not less than on one essential stretch of pavement between the Western Slope and the Entrance Vary, not practically busy sufficient for some.
“We’ve had some complaints” concerning the wait alongside the Little Blue Creek Canyon stretch of U.S. 50 between Montrose and Gunnison, public data officer Mavis Fitzgerald stated.
The four-mile size of freeway, a tough route that leads east-west site visitors off surrounding mesas and deep into vertiginous, rock-walled Little Blue, has been below in depth development since final yr. It gives entry to Black Canyon of the Gunnison Nationwide Park, Curecanti Nationwide Recreation Space and — maybe most significantly, for native drivers — another path to the Entrance Vary that doesn’t contain journey on I-70.
After months of mostly-all-day (and definitely-all-night) shutdowns, the route just lately reopened to alternating one-way site visitors. “The wait is just about half-hour to an hour,” Fitzgerald stated. “I believe most locals perceive this, and we’re grateful for his or her endurance.”
The individuals who Fitzgerald and her coworkers have been listening to from “didn’t check out CoTrips.org,” the state’s web site that alerts drivers to roadwork, “and didn’t learn the signage we’ve posted.”
For individuals who are heading over, or getting back from, the Entrance Vary, Fitzgerald had some recommendation: pack your endurance, notably simply earlier than the weekend.
“Friday afternoons are the worst,” she stated. “There’s a whole lot of site visitors between now and Labor Day,” and she or he suspects there could also be solely barely much less quickly, on condition that “leaf-peeping season,” as she put it, is a few month away.
The undertaking is scheduled to be full by subsequent July. Between at times — besides when development shuts down utterly this winter — drivers ought to proceed to plan on alternating single-lane site visitors from Monday to Friday, from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and full nightly closures Monday to Thursday from 7:30 p.m. to six:30 a.m.
U.S. 50 is open to two-way site visitors each weekend, from 7:30 p.m. Friday to six:30 a.m. Monday, and might be absolutely open Labor Day weekend till Tuesday, Sept. 6, at 8:30 a.m. Go to cotrips.org to see highway circumstances statewide; to study extra concerning the US 50 undertaking, go to US50Info.com.
BUSTANG FARE SALE
A consequence of heavy summer time site visitors is elevated air air pollution. The passage of Colorado Senate Invoice 180 created an “ozone season” grant program, permitting transit associations to supply rides at diminished price — an incentive to go away the automobile within the storage. For native riders of Bustang Outrider, the CDOT conveyance that goals to attach rural routes to Denver, that’s excellent news: till Sept. 5, all tickets are 50 p.c off.
There are two Bustang routes obtainable regionally: one bus makes weekday roundtrip runs from Telluride to Grand Junction (and from there east to Denver, or wherever additional your travels might take you).
One other bus runs seven days every week from Durango to Grand Junction and again once more, and stops in Telluride.
“We’re on the point of get began on some new routes,” stated Jeffrey Prillwitz, undertaking supervisor for Bustang Outrider. “Now we have some feelers going out for a route between Craig to Rifle into Grand Junction; our new route, from Pagosa Springs to Durango, is already on the desk. Most likely the largest one developing for the Western Slope — the route that has the most effective shot” at coming to fruition — “might be from Crested Butte and Gunnison to Montrose, as soon as the development on U.S. 50 will get executed.”
To see a schedule and buy tickets, go to ridebustang.com.
