Colorado’s worst recurring traffic chokepoint is being rebuilt one bridge at a time. The I-70 Floyd Hill project covers eight miles between the Veterans Memorial Tunnels and US 6, the stretch where westbound weekend ski traffic backs up for hours and where the existing alignment dates to the 1960s. CDOT reported in July 2026 that construction had passed the halfway point, its biggest milestone since work started in 2023.
Project Scope
The work rebuilds I-70 from roughly mileposts 244 to 252 in Clear Creek County. New westbound and eastbound bridge structures carry the interstate on a revised alignment between mid-Floyd Hill and the Hidden Valley / Central City Parkway interchange. A third westbound lane gets added through the canyon section. The package also includes a new frontage road system, wildlife crossings, and an extension of the Clear Creek Greenway trail, so it is a multimodal rebuild rather than a straight widening.
Cost climbed from a $700 million conceptual estimate in 2020 to roughly $900 million at award, driven by materials and construction inflation over the intervening years. CDOT delivered it as CM/GC with Kraemer North America as construction manager and AtkinsRealis as lead designer under a six-year, $31 million design contract. Substantial completion on the east section is targeted for 2026, with the full corridor wrapping around 2028.
Why It Matters
Floyd Hill is the single worst bottleneck on the mountain corridor that feeds Summit and Eagle counties, and the ski economy that depends on it. Every peak weekend, the existing geometry converts a four-hour drive into a six-hour one. That is the case CDOT made for spending nearly a billion dollars on eight miles of road.
The delivery method is worth noting on its own. CDOT ran an unusually long preconstruction runway with Kraemer at the table, which is how a job with this much rock excavation, this many staged bridge builds, and no realistic detour route gets sequenced without shutting the interstate down. Mountain-corridor work has to happen under live traffic, in a construction season compressed by elevation and weather. Contractors bidding similar Western DOT work should read the $700 million to $900 million escalation as the current baseline, not an outlier.
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Project Team & Details
| Owner / Client | Colorado Department of Transportation |
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| Consultants | AtkinsRealis / Atkins North America (Lead Designer) |
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| General Contractor | Kraemer North America |
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| Status | Under Construction |
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| Delivery Method | CMAR |
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| Funding Source | Public (State) |
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