Promoters of a design competition to produce a “next generation” wildlife crossing for spanning Interstate 70 in the Vail area have revealed submissions from five finalists bidding for the award.The Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University is sponsoring the ARC International Wildlife Crossing design competition, which settled on the finalists from 36 submissions that came in from nine countries.The teams included 100 design firms from around the world. The finalists are teams led by design firms based in New York, Philadelphia, Toronto and Amsterdam.Physical models of the five designs of finalists will be displayed at the Western Governors’ Wildlife Council meeting in Denver on Wednesday,said Rob Ament, Western Transportation Institute project manager for the competition.The winning team will be announced at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23.”The winning design will serve as a model for the world in creating the next generation of wildlife crossings facilitating the movement and protection of wildlife and providing for the free flow of traffic and people,” promoters of the design competition said.”These teams have shown that we have the research, the technology and the talent to create a state-of-the-art wildlife crossing that can be replicated throughout the United States and the world,” Western Transportation Institute senior research scientist Tony Clevenger said in a statement.Clevenger and others from the institute said designers had to deal with special challenges unique to the development of an animal crossing in the West Vail Pass area. They include heavy snow loads and other severe weather problems, an increasing volume of traffic on I-70, high elevation, steep grades and the possible future construction of an “advanced-guideway” train in the I-70 corridor.Read more: Finalists named in designs for I-70 wildlife crossing – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_16725692#ixzz16izGCmU5Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse