FasTraks starts Sheridan bridge work, traffic woes loom

Rendering of the Sheridan light rail station with Sheridan Boulevard raised on a new bridge over Dry Gulch.

LAKEWOOD – Two lanes, two years. Get ready, drivers, for what may be the West Corridor light rail project’s most inconvenient traffic impact.

Starting Monday night and lasting for about the next two years, four-lane Sheridan Boulevard between 10th and 14th avenues will be narrowed down to two lanes. If you can get through this, you can get through most anything FasTracks will throw at your drive over the next eight years.

The lane restriction was part of a trade-off that allowed RTD to stick its original plan to leave the FasTracks West Corridor tracks at ground level along the Dry Gulch valley while raising Sheridan on a bridge above the gulch.

Monday night, Sheridan will close entirely overnight between 10th and 14th starting at 9 p.m. so that workers can set up the narrowed detour route, using the existing two northbound lanes on the east side of the street. The plan is to reopen to traffic at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday in the reduced configuration. Workers already have placed a new sidewalk along the east side of Sheridan as part of the detour work.

Two-lane traffic will stay on the east side until Lawrence Construction builds the southbound half of the Sheridan bridge to the west of the detour. At that point, two-lane traffic will be shifted to the southbound side while Lawrence completes the northbound bridge lanes.

Traffic counts by the Colorado Department of Transportation show an estimated 33,100 vehicles a day use this segment of Sheridan Boulevard. That’s about the same number that travel Colfax Avenue between Sheridan and Federal boulevards.

“We realize that this will be a tremendous inconvenience to the traveling public and we will do everything we can to complete construction in this area as quickly as possible,” said Kathy Berumen, spokeswoman for Denver Transit Construction Group. DTCG is RTD’s general contractor and construction manager for the civil construction of the West Corridor.

The suggested detour routes are Federal and Wadsworth boulevards.

The bridge will be a two-span structure with a total length of just over 265 feet from end to end. From the top of the light rail tracks to the underside of the bridge girders will be a clearance of 20 feet, three inches. Bridge construction is valued at $3.9 million.

This was pretty much the original West Corridor plan, to build the light rail tracks at grade along Dry Gulch as it crosses Sheridan. The gulch cuts a deep swale that drivers on Sheridan take like a roller coaster ride. A few blocks south, near Eighth Avenue, another big dip occurs where Lakewood Gulch crosses Sheridan.

Residents of the area liked the plan. The hill from 10th down to the gulch then up again toward 14th is hazardous especially in icy weather. Sight lines are poor. Raising Sheridan will mitigate those problems. Also, leaving the tracks on the ground while raising Sheridan would unite the open spaces on both sides – to the east it’s Denver’s Lakewood and Dry Gulch Park, on the west it’s open space in Lakewood. It allows the light rail station there to be in a park-like setting accessible by bike and pedestrians as well as motorists via a parking garage.

But RTD, faced with massive FasTracks cost increases in 2006, started looking for cuts through so-called “value engineering,” an exercise in finding different and less expensive ways to accomplish project goals. RTD brought in outside experts and used in-house staff to brainstorm cuts on the West Corridor. Flip-flopping the grade separation at the Sheridan crossing was a sizable savings. RTD estimated it could save more than $7 million if, instead of raising Sheridan on a bridge over Dry Gulch and the light rail tracks, it left Sheridan on the ground and simply bridged the light rail over the street.

Residents, Denver planners and Lakewood pushed back. RTD agreed to reconsider if a cost-neutral way could be found to reinstate the original design.

When CDOT was willing to waive a requirement that RTD maintain existing traffic flow during the construction period – combined with Denver providing some local park funds, RTD saved enough money to restore the original design.

Relieving the need to provide a four-lane detour through the construction zone allowed RTD to reduce the amount of real estate it would have to acquire by eminent domain alongside Sheridan for the temporary route. It also allowed for a reduction in traffic control costs.