As summer winds down, traffic impacts from road projects continue in Colorado Springs. Academy Boulevard, Fountain Boulevard, and 8th Street offer recent, current, and future examples of road projects that can frustrate drivers — in some cases, unexpectedly so.
Road Projects Update
Traffic alignments change often on the north end of 8th Street, where crews are replacing a water main; for several weeks, traffic in both directions had to navigate two sharp turns and share the northbound side in front of Walmart to get through the work zone. Later this week, however, the pattern changed again, this time to a straighter alignment in which traffic squeezes into the southbound lanes.
In late July, many drivers were surprised to see repaving work happening on stretches of Academy Boulevard between Austin Bluffs Parkway and North Carefree Circle. That area is known for having particularly heavy traffic and crumbling streets; in fact, it was a target of the city’s recently completed ‘pothole surge,’ with crews focusing on additional pothole patching.
A city spokesman said that the resurfacing was maintenance paving intended to stabilize the street until it receives a full repaving under the city’s 2C expanded paving program. Also in late July, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) performed maintenance paving on segments of eastbound Fountain Boulevard between Academy and Powers boulevards; the agency did similar repaving in the westbound lanes last summer.
Fountain Boulevard and Expressway — four miles between Interstate 25 and Powers — is scheduled for repaving by CDOT in 2028. Additionally, drivers have noticed a second straight year of maintenance paving on US 24 between Powers and Peterson Road.
Back on 8th Street, a significant traffic change starts Monday and will last for two months: The closure of the east southbound temporary lane on the Fountain Creek bridge. Earlier this spring, crews found that more repairs than expected were needed to the railing, sidewalk, and bridge deck.
Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.
