Construction poised to begin on final North I-25 segment

BERTHOUD — The Jersey barriers, hundreds of them, are stacked and ready to be placed. Now begins construction on the final phase of expansion of the North Interstate 25 project.

Segment five, which is six miles between Mead and Berthoud, will be expanded with tolled express lanes running both north and south. 

So for Northern Colorado motorists, who for a couple of months have seen the lessened traffic congestion resulting from completion of earlier segments between Fort Collins and Berthoud, work will begin in earnest and continue into 2028.

That completion date doesn’t quite meet the “25 by (20)25” slogan expressed by Northern Colorado business and government leaders in 2013, but it certainly beats the predictions of state officials who warned northern residents of the state that they shouldn’t count on expansion of the highway until 2075.

Shailen Bhatt, administrator with the Federal Highway Administration and formerly the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, noted in a short speech to a few dozen people gathered to mark the occasion of the start of the final segment, said the corridor is important to the state and nation because it connects Mexico and Canada and is a primary conduit for goods and services through the heart of the country.

He said he was shocked back in 2013, when he was CDOT director, about the poor condition of the roadway.

“We invited him here so he could experience it,” David May, former Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce CEO, whispered to BizWest as Bhatt spoke. The strategy worked. May was instrumental in helping form the North I-25 Coalition that leveraged local money to combine with state and federal resources to get the project done more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.

“Local governments (along the corridor) have remained unbelievably focused regardless of whose jurisdiction this is in,” said CDOT executive director Shoshana Lew.

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, then a Weld County commissioner, said it was “the power of coalition and the power of teamwork that was key.” 

She said that the coalition’s strategy to build the north segments near Fort Collins and Loveland first, leaving “missing miles,” was deliberate. 

“If we had kept working north from Denver, we would have never reached the northern segments,” she said. The “necked-down” portion of the six remaining miles between Berthoud and Mead stands as a constant reminder that the project isn’t done. 

Construction on the remaining six miles, with eight bridges, will get underway this summer. Two lanes of traffic will be maintained during construction, but cone zones will slow speeds, and lanes may be closed for night-time construction.

As for Bhatt, numerous next phases are on his mind.

“The money from the (federal) infrastructure bill was just a downpayment on decades of underfunding,” he told BizWest.

He said he along with others will observe in August the death last year of Magnus White, 17, a competitive cyclist who was killed along Colorado Highway 119 in Boulder County. 

“Safety is foremost on my mind,” he said of the projects that the state and federal government need to support financially.

In reference to a question about the congested highways that cross I-25 — U.S. Highway 34 along with Colorado Highways 392, 14, 402, 56, 60 and others that serve as commercial corridors through Northern Colorado, he said he recognized the issue but didn’t cite a funding plan.

“Success in Colorado comes with impacts to infrastructure,” he said.