18-month road/bridge project on U.S. 285 gets going

The aging U.S. 285 bridge over Wadsworth will be rebuilt as part of project..

LAKEWOOD – The dirt is starting to move in the $40.1 million design-build reconstruction of a 4-mile stretch along West Hampden Avenue, starting at the east end of the corridor with replacement of the bridge over Federal Boulevard.

The team of Concrete Express Inc. and Tsiouvaras Simmons and Holderness is doing the work. With construction at Federal well underway, crews will next start in on the Wadsworth Boulevard bridge replacement. The Pierce Street structure also will be replaced.

Hampden will be rebuilt in concrete except for the westernmost 1-mile portion, which will be asphalt. The portions of the median that are now grass will be paved over with a center concrete barrier, similar to the segment between Knox Court and Sheridan Boulevard, to widen the roadway. It will remain striped for four lanes rather than six, however.

The 18-month project includes three bridge replacements – Wadsworth Boulevard and Pierce Street in addition to Federal – widened shoulders, concrete barriers, drainage improvements, upgraded signage and concrete reconstruction of the lanes between Kipling Street and Wadsworth. Bridge-deck rehabilitation is included for four other bridges.

Lakewood contributed money to the project budget for CDOT to make the Wadsworth span wide enough to accommodate six through-lanes plus double-left turns onto the freeway. Currently, the south approach has six lanes but they end at the Hampden ramps, a “lane-drop” that creates a rush-hour bottleneck. It will permit the six-lane profile to push north to Girton Avenue

It is scheduled for completion in June 2011.

Average daily traffic on the corridor ranges from 63,700 vehicles a day at Kipling, 65,900 at Federal and the highest total, 71,100, at Wadsworth. Peak-hour congestion is a long-standing problem due to the traffic signal at Knox/Lowell.

Under the design-build method of project delivery, the Colorado Department of Transportation establishes the scope and goals of the program and provides early design work, to the 30 percent level. It then puts the program on the market and, instead of taking the lowest bidder as in the traditional design/bid/build model, it looks for the team that brings the best value to the project. The winning team completes both the design and the construction, and any savings it finds go to fund the options that are added.

When used in the right projects, design-build can help stretch scarce transportation dollars, which don’t go as far as they used to.

The Concrete Express/TSH team proposed several additions to the scope of the project including reconstruction of four miles, toward Kipling Street, instead of just three miles. It did that by using less expensive methods on the bridge reconstructions – using clear-span structures to make the three crossings without center piers – and plowed the savings into additions for the project.

Design-build is how CDOT and the Regional Transportation District managed the $1.75 billion T-REX reconstruction of Interstate 25 and I-225, with new lanes and light rail. This is the largest project CDOT has done with this method since.

Hampden Avenue was once State Highway 70. It ran west out of Englewood, across the South Platte River on an older bridge near the old Cinderella Twin Drive-In and through Sheridan until it detoured south on Lowell then west on Kenyon Avenue, on the north side of Fort Logan National Cemetery to Sheridan Boulevard. It then went straight west to Morrison.

The plan early on was to make Hampden across-town freeway along the south metro suburbs to Interstate 25. Work began on grade separations at major intersections. The bypass under Broadway in Englewood was first, in 1955. A new bridge across the Platte was done in 1960 – upgraded in 1985 – and the intersection at Federal was grade-separated in 1961 with a new alignment parallel to Old Hampden. Raleigh Street and Sheridan Boulevard were bridged a year later, with Pierce and Wadsworth grade-separated in 1964.

Kipling Street was bridged in 1967.