A new displaced turn lane allowing northbound traffic on Camino del Rio to turn left onto U.S. Highway 160 at the DoubleTree Hotel intersection went live Monday night.
Crews began moving signal posts, taking out barriers, unbagging signals and timing the signals at 8 p.m. Monday, said Nancy Shanks, spokeswoman for Colorado Department of Transportation.
The lane was fully open to traffic about 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, said Mike McVaugh, lead traffic engineer for CDOT.
Creating the displaced westbound left-turn lane was part of CDOT’s $6 million continuous-flow intersection project, which began in March, Shanks said.
The project’s focus is to relieve congestion and improve safety at the intersection, as well as redesign the intersection of College Drive and Camino del Rio, she said.
CDOT workers plan to be finished with the project mid-August.
Today was the first day the lane was open to the estimated 40,000 cars that transition through the U.S. Highway 550/160 intersection daily, McVaugh said.
“Every once in a while you will see someone hesitate and not know exactly what to do, but we have tons of signs, flags and flashing lights letting people know about the change,” said Tommy Humphrey, CDOT project engineer. “People are getting it.”
The displaced left-turn lane is marked with a traffic signal that is about 500 feet south of the Highway 550/160 intersection.
Overhead signs at the traffic signal near Santa Rita Park alert drivers of the upcoming turn lane, Humphrey said.
To turn left onto Highway 160, drivers need to stay in the left lane and follow the new traffic signals, he said.
“We have eliminated the left turn from the intersection by shifting it back,” Humphrey said. Before the changes were made to the intersection, only one traffic movement could go through the light at once, Humphrey said.
“You could either have 160 going, the northbound left on 550 going or southbound going because they all crossed at the same spot,” he said.
Traffic attempting to turn left onto Highway 160 would be backed up 1,100 feet during busy times, McVaugh said.
Because of the displaced left-turn lane, traffic traveling southbound on Highway 550 can go through the intersection at the same time as traffic turning left onto Highway 160, he said.
Traffic waiting to turn left on to Highway 160 will be backed up only 400 feet during peak travel times, McVaugh said.
“We cut the wait time in half,” he said. “We are just using the time more effectively.”
The changes that CDOT made provided a way to ease the congestion at this intersection for years to come, Shanks said.
“In a nutshell, at any signal light, some people will have a red light and some will have a green,” Humphrey said. “The continuous-flow intersection has allowed more movements to have an episode at the same time. The more movements you can have going at the same time, the more efficient the intersection becomes.”
The idea was not to get traffic through the intersection quickly but to make the transition through the signal smoother, Humphrey said.
“Adding the lights at the intersection has actually kept speeds slower,” he said.
The lights near the DoubleTree Hotel intersection are timed for traffic traveling 35 mph, McVaugh said.
The lights provide a way to keep drivers traveling slowly through the intersection, he said.
Slowing down traffic near the DoubleTree intersection has always been a big issue, he said.
“We knew it would work; we just had to make sure all the pieces were in place to do it,” McVaugh said. “It makes traffic so much lighter through here.”
tferraro@durangoherald.com. Taylor Ferraro is a student at Fort Lewis College and an intern at The Durango Herald.
