As the busiest holiday week of the 2024-2025 winter resort season is fast approaching, locals and visitors alike will be reminded that 40 out of the 52 weekends each year Summit County experiences Front Range traffic volumes with undersized and outdated roadway infrastructure. Yes, there have been improvements over the past decade, with four lanes on Colorado Highway 9 south into Breckenridge and plans for improvements to the Exit 203 I-70 interchange on the east side of Frisco, but, as a rule, the Colorado Department of Transportation treats Summit County like a rural stepchild.

Last month, CDOT representatives held an open house at the Silverthorne Pavilion to officially inform the community they have pulled the plug on plans to make improvements to the Exit 205 interchange.  Formally titled, the “Mobility Study in Dillon and Silverthorne at US 6 & CO 9,” it can be found at https://www.cdot.gov/projects/studies/us6co9corridorstudy. CDOT’s decision was not really a surprise. The signs were increasingly obvious when CDOT added the additional east bound lane and repaved Silverthorne Hill.

During my tenure on Silverthorne Town Council, the town and Summit County were able to move improvements to Exit 205 up CDOT’s funding priority ladder. At the time, CDOT proposed the “diverging diamond” scheme to increase interchange capacity while avoiding the cost of modifications to the second overpass over the Blue River. While I was always skeptical of introducing a traffic pattern that requires visitors unfamiliar with the concept to drive British for a while, especially when pavement markings are covered with snow, there was at least hope of improvements to the woefully underperforming interchange in the foreseeable future.

CDOT has offered to partner with the Silverthorne, Dillon, and Summit County to pursue grant funding for AI-inspired traffic signal technology to help maximize traffic flow through Silverthorne, and westbound down Dillon Ridge, but the idea of improving arterial road infrastructure when the underperforming interchange can’t handle the increased traffic flow, is unlikely to offer much benefit for the considerable cost of any improvements. Aside from the user frustration and inconvenience, failure to recommend a future interchange design severely handicaps redevelopment of any properties adjacent to the existing interchange because nobody is going to pay to acquire or redevelop property that CDOT may decide they need to eminent domain for interchange improvements in 2045.

For better or worse, Highway 9 is Silverthorne’s main street, and traffic light timing is a persistent source of frustration for Silverthorne locals. The state owns and controls every light on Highway 9. In developing the downtown core, Town Council spent a lot of time discussing ways to slow traffic speeds down though the area for pedestrian safety and retail business visibility. CDOT’s conceptual plan to further divide Highway 9 with more medians, fewer turning movements, and longer turning lanes — all the way down to Silverthorne Elementary — will make it harder to access local businesses and likely increase average traffic speeds. We do not need the pavement equivalent of railroad tracks to further divide the two sides of town.

CDOT’s primary interest is moving traffic, so the pedestrian and commercial interests of the towns will always be subordinated to their objectives. CDOT’s study concludes that 55% of traffic moving through Silverthorne is thru traffic, 45% is local/regional, and 18% of that is local traffic within Silverthorne.  CDOT predicts traffic will increase 45% from current levels by 2045, “which highlights the need for proactive planning.” The problem is, the “planning” CDOT is proposing for Silverthorne and Dillon is completely worthless.

The long-term design solution for the I-70 Dillon/Silverthorne/Keystone Exit 205 interchange should also include plans for emergency evacuation of Wilderness/Mesa Cortina. I appreciate that our local planners and elected officials have tried to push the intransigent CDOT bureaucracy to improve the I-70 interchange for over 20 years. Sadly, we are back to square one.

Commissioner Nina Waters, you are paid a salary that many in Summit County wish they earned for serving on the Board of County Commissioners. Improving Exit 205 is, by far, the most critical traffic and economic impediment in District 3. Inaction for years to come is unacceptable! I urge you to set up camp in CDOT’s main lobby until they take our traffic problems seriously.

Bruce Butler's column "Common Sense Conversations" publishes biweekly on Tuesdays in the Summit Daily News. Butler is a former mayor and council member in Silverthorne, where he has lived for 20 years. Contact him at butlerincolorado@gmail.com.