The Colorado Department of Transportation says it has finished moving mountains — literally — as part of a $900 million project to rebuild an 8-mile section of Interstate 70 to improve safety and travel times.

Over the past three years, crews working on the Floyd Hill project have removed more than 765,500 tons — equal to the weight of 30 Statues of Liberty — of rock from the mountainside, according to the transportation department.

At a news conference on Wednesday, July 29, state officials announced that the “substantial completion” of rock blasting operations marks the halfway point of the multiyear project — and the conclusion of one of the project’s most disruptive phases.

“If I had to say what the most onerous part of this project would be from a day-to-day basis, it was probably those 15-minute holds,” said CDOT Executive Director Shoshana Lew. “They had to happen because you can’t take down rockface without closing it to live traffic while it’s happening, but those were hard for the public — and we know that.”

Officials said motorists can expect a “significant decrease” in the number of short, daytime traffic holds resulting from the project. For three years, the rock blasting intermittently led to weekday holds that could back up traffic and create delays of up to 45 minutes.

Through mid-August, drivers on I-70 can anticipate a series of overnight, single-direction eastbound and westbound I-70 closures at the bottom of Floyd Hill at Exit 244 to aid bridge construction, according to CDOT.

The I-70 Floyd Hill Project focuses on a stretch of highway that bottlenecks — from three lanes down to two on the westbound side — and makes sharp curves through a tight canyon. Lew described Floyd Hill as “one of the few remaining very challenging sections along the stretch going from Denver to the mountains.”

The reconfiguration of the interstate, when complete, will offer gentler, safer curves through the widened canyon, according to transportation officials. The construction plans call for adding a third lane of travel, which will be a tolled Express Lane, and full shoulders.

“That missing link — from two lanes to three — smooths out the traffic and deals with the fact that people were already driving it like it was a three-lane road,” Lew said. “It’ll make it a lot safer, a lot smoother and it’ll be a significant measure in (reducing) those traffic jams that users on both sides of the hill know all too well.”

Bridge construction to advance at ‘aggressive pace’

During a tour of the construction zone on Wednesday, CDOT Floyd Hill Project Director Kurt Kionka said crews are now ramping up construction of the interstate bridges that will braid through the canyon.

Much of the construction planned over the next year will occur over the heads of motorists driving by as I-70 continues to flow, Kionka said. Over the coming months, he said drivers will see 100-foot columns rise out of the ground and a “segmental” bridge that will be built in 15-foot-sections that will reach like the letter “T” hundreds of feet above the canyon floor.

“It’s massive, just the scale of this project,” Kionka said, pointing as cranes lifted materials to crews working from scaffolding high above his head. “This is one of 10 bridges that we are constructing or reconstructing as part of the project, and there’s over two miles of deep caissons, drilled into bedrock, for all the structures.”

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Since starting the bridge work late last year, crews have constructed 15 columns and erected 31 beams — and things are about to kick into an even higher gear.

By the end of next year, CDOT officials said the public could be driving on the new westbound alignment of I-70. Then, the eastbound alignment of I-70 is expected to be completed by the end of 2028. The project, which also includes creating a new frontage road, environmental mitigation and other safety improvements, is scheduled to wrap up in 2029.

“The kinds of features that you’re seeing today, the piers going up, the bridge spans — all of that is going to be moving at an aggressive pace,” Lew said. “It looks awfully different today than it did a year ago. You can expect to see continued, very visible progress.”

Matt Hogan, the project director with Kraemer North America, the primary contractor on the project, said that more than 1 million hours of labor have gone into the I-70 Floyd Hill Project so far — and many more are ahead.

As construction continues, Hogan said drivers should anticipate lane shifts and changing traffic patterns and should remain attentive to their speed and surroundings while driving through the construction zone.

“Be respectful of us. Like I said, there’s 250 people working every day, and they’re out here right next to live traffic,” he said. “We will respect (drivers) just as much as they respect us to keep them moving. We just ask them to obey the speed limits and keep us safe.”