Off the side of Interstate 70, a small building just outside the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels typically goes almost entirely unnoticed by the thousands of drivers who whiz through the mountain corridor every day.

Ahead of this winter, the Colorado Department of Transportation invested $12 million in the tunnel facility, with the goal of reducing highway closures that not only hold up traffic but have a calculable impact on the state’s economy.

“The Eisenhower Tunnel, as everyone who drives it knows, is the linchpin of I-70, particularly on the mountain corridor,” CDOT Executive Director Shoshana Lew said. “Without it, you can’t get from the Front Range to the Western Slope without a much more treacherous drive.”

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For every hour the I-70 mountain corridor is closed, the state’s economy takes an almost $2 million hit, Lew said. But at an elevation of more 11,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, the stretch of highway and the crews that tend to it face a formidable opponent this time of year: winter.

There were 72 closures within about 5 miles of either end of the tunnel between October and May last winter, for a total of 158 closed hours, according to CDOT. There were reportedly 61 closures near the tunnels for a total of 130 closed hours during the 2021-22 winter season.

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That’s where the recent upgrades come in. The facility on the west side of the tunnel now hosts a new operations center decked out with high-tech cameras and screens, living quarters for staff to overnight in the mountains during winter storms, and an improved storage and maintenance bays for plows — all in an effort to keep the highway open and get travelers to their destinations this winter.

“Providing resources to enable the highway maintainers to be situated right at the tunnel can dramatically increase how much they’re ready to respond to a snow event,” Lew said. “For those reasons we felt for a long time the assets need to be where the operational hub is. In our view, that was one of the most strategic investments we could make.”

Plows and people

While standing outside the tunnels in November, CDOT maintenance and operations director John Lorme explained that, as he sees it, the government has no role more important than transportation.

Crossing the Continental Divide, the I-70 mountain corridor is one of the most important highways in Colorado. It serves as both a major route for ski tourism as well as freight shipments traveling between Denver and the West Coast, Lorme said.

“I think and I believe, and I believe our team does too, that there is nothing more important than our highway system,” Lorme said. “Keeping a well-functioning and operating highway system is imperative to the state economy and to growth and the population.”

But because the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels are the largest and highest highway tunnels in the nation, managing them can present unique challenges, Lorme said. Avalanche paths flank the highway on either side of the tunnels and the climate near the tunnels can experience some of the most rapid temperature swings in the country — as well as 100 mph winds, white-out snowstorms and blizzard conditions, he said.

Completed in 1973, the tunnels are also 50 years old and were constructed when snow plows were smaller and there were fewer travelers on the interstate system, Lorme noted. The space that is now living quarters was originally constructed around the 1960s but was uninsulated and used mostly as dry storage for decades, he said.

“We wanted people to enjoy working here. We want them to feel safe and comfortable and productive. And working in a tunnel, it’s very 1960s. It’s pretty hardcore,” Lorme said. “If you work in the tunnel there’s no creature comforts.”

As the state’s economy has grown over the past 40 years and property values have continued to rise, it has also become more difficult for the transportation department to staff the I-70 mountain corridor, Lorme said.

In recent years, the transportation department has raised the starting salaries for highway maintenance workers, provided more housing stipends and worked collaboratively with mountain towns on workforce housing initiatives like Granite Park in Frisco, he said.

But upgrades to the decades-old facilities at the tunnels are also part of the transportation department’s efforts to recruit and retain employees.

“Morale is probably the number one thing for me,” Lorme said. “This center in that building has raised morale here. The (Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels) are fully staffed for the first time in 30 years.”

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Whereas maintainers used to sleep in their vehicles or in a cot in an office when it was snowing too hard for them to head home after a shift, now there are dedicated living quarters, including a kitchenette and separate bunk rooms for men and women, Lorme said.

Those living quarters lead right out to the maintenance bays where CDOT can store 10 plows. Before the upgrades, there were no indoor facilities at the tunnel big enough to park plows or perform maintenance, Lorme said, which meant crews were often scraping snow and ice off their vehicles and performing required pre-shift checks in frigid mountain conditions.

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Now, not only can maintainers park their plow indoors during shift changes but the vehicles can be washed and repaired on-site at the tunnels instead of being shuttled down to the Front Range on a regular basis, Lorme said.

Costing nearly $400,000 a piece, those plows are important pieces of equipment. Being able to wash the machines on a more regular basis will help increase their lifespan, while being able to do repairs at the tunnel will help keep the plows in the mountains where they’re needed the most, he said.

“That plow and nine others, I can work on them up here. Instead of taking them down the hill to do maintenance, they’re up here now,” Lorme said. “So every time there’s a shift change, we can back the plows into their bay and they’re warm.”

‘Unity of effort’

When a winter storm rolls into the mountains, slicking up I-70’s steep highway slopes, CDOT has to be able to react quickly and coordinate with multiple partners to keep traffic flowing.

The department must keep a close eye on the highway at all times while also communicating in real-time with Colorado State Patrol, dispatchers, tow companies and local law enforcement to respond to incidents, even in the worst winter conditions, Lew said.

“This facility is built to be able to protect the traveling public and the state workforce,” Lew said. “It serves the traveling public in a snowstorm and makes it possible to respond more effectively, efficiently and safely.”

As part of the recent upgrades, CDOT installed a new operations center with wall-to-wall screens in the small building west of the tunnels and outfitted it with fiber optic cables. Colorado State Patrol will also have an office at the facility.

The cameras and monitors allow crews to zoom all the way into the roadway, up to 2 miles away from the tunnels, to detect even small debris such as nails, Lew said. The technology reportedly allows operators to see how many passengers are in a vehicle, license plate numbers and more.

“Cameras having the ability to monitor are critical to everything from knowing where there is an incident so we can move on it quickly to being able to manage the traffic at the tunnel,” Lew said. “Those cameras are kind of the eyes and ears on the road to be able to have a whole view to know where you need to tweak operations in a snowstorm.”

From friction sensors to weather stations, the stretch of the I-70 mountain corridor near the tunnels is equipped with some of the world’s best technologies, which feed data directly to the operations center, Lorme said. Tunnel operators will monitor the screens at the operations center 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, he said.

The operations center at the I-70 tunnels can do everything that the transportation department’s flagship operations center in Golden can do, but is focused on the I-70 mountain corridor from Golden to Silverthorne, Lorme said.

While travelers driving by may hardly notice the facility, the recent upgrades there will go a long way to ensuring a smooth and safe journey for everyone, Lorme said. The goal, he said, is that when someone types a destination into their phone, the estimated time of arrival that it spits back is accurate — with no road closures along the way.

“The truth is the traveling public might not notice this. I mean, this building has been here for 45 years, and we repurposed it to make better use of it,” Lorme said. “And the maintenance facility, to be honest with you, most people don’t even notice the garages.”

“But I promise you,” he said, “if they weren’t here, you’d notice.”