The lanes are currently in a free testing mode, with plans to begin collecting tolls Feb. 28 as the $1.3 billion wraps up. But CDOT spokesman Tim Hoover says the system contractor, Electronic Transaction Consultants, has run into “software issues” and other challenges as it prepares the equipment.

“Our hope is to open it before spring,” Hoover said. “We might end up considerably sooner than that, but we’re just in a holding pattern at the moment.”

Once charging begins, drivers who have an ExpressToll transponder will pay flat-rate tolls between $2.50 and $4.50, depending on the time of day, under a rate schedule approved last month by the board of CDOT’s enterprise arm. Toll rates will be considerably higher, up to about $10, for those charged by license-plate tolling.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.

Drivers who have zipped along the new Interstate 70 express toll lanes in northeast Denver for free during a monthslong testing period soon will have to pay to beat traffic.

The Colorado Department of Transportation aims to start tolling on Feb. 28.  Drivers will pay tolls of up to $4.50 — or up to $10 for drivers who lack an ExpressToll transponder — for access at the busiest time of day under a rate schedule approved Wednesday by CDOT’s enterprise arm. The start of automated tolling is one of the final milestones of the $1.3 billion Central 70 expansion project.

Tolls will be flat-rate, applying seven days a week to the entire 10-mile express lane corridor between Interstate 25 in Denver and Chambers Road in Aurora. The express lanes have three entrance and exit points in each direction.

The maximum $4.50 toll for account holders will apply, in both directions, during the morning rush hour from 6 to 9 a.m. Charges will fluctuate between $2.50 and $3.25 during the rest of the day before dropping to $1.50 at 7 p.m., with that rate applying overnight.

Tolls charged via license-plate tolling, including for out-of-state drivers, will run between $4.26 and $10.08, depending on the time of day and the direction of travel.

But not all drivers will pay to use the express lanes.

Like some other CDOT express-lane corridors, the Central 70 toll lanes will allow free access for vehicles carrying at least three passengers (a switchable HOV transponder is required), as well as for motorcyclists and public transit providers.

Some neighbors also will get free access under that will provide transponders and $100 in toll credits to residents of Denver’s Elyria-Swansea and Globeville neighborhoods, if they meet certain income requirements. That $1 million program also includes the distribution of nearly 8,000 free transit ride books in those communities for use on Regional Transportation District buses and trains, along with the potential for recurring toll credits and additional free transit passes each year.

Big-rig trucks can use the I-70 toll lanes, but any vehicle with four axles or more will be charged an extra $25.

The Central 70 project rebuilt major sections of I-70 and widened the corridor to make room for the express lanes. While the project was intended to smooth the flow of traffic on the major corridor, officials acknowledged the project wouldn’t eliminate congestion. But they aimed to give drivers the option of a faster ride.

“Express lanes are always a choice, and you can use them for a more reliable trip time,” CDOT spokesman Tim Hoover said Wednesday during a presentation to the board of the Colorado Transportation Investment Office, which oversees tolling initiatives.

The toll schedule is based on daily traffic patterns, with higher rates at times of greater congestion to keep traffic moving quickly in the express lanes. It’s possible the maximum rate, capped at $4.50 in the first year, could increase next year.

For now, assuming a driver uses an express lane for the entire length of the corridor, the per-mile maximum rate, 45 cents, is roughly on par with U.S. 36 and Interstate 25 through the north suburbs. But drivers who use shorter segments of the I-70 lanes will pay a much higher per-mile rate.

CDOT aims at some point — potentially later this year — to change tolling on its expanding metro Denver express-lanes network from set daily toll schedules to dynamic tolling. Under that setup, which has been used on the I-70 mountain express lanes near Idaho Springs, tolls would increase or decrease in response to traffic levels in the general lanes.

Details about neighborhood equity program

CDOT plans to launch its “tolling equity program” for Globeville and Elyria-Swansea in late February.

Along with a cover park built over the highway, the program is part of a package of project mitigations meant to compensate for the impact of construction, including the bulldozing of 56 homes and 17 businesses to make room for the expanded highway.

Neighborhood residents — and anyone displaced by the project — can receive the initial toll credits if their household income is 200% or less of . That works out to $60,000 for a family of four. CDOT estimates 53% of households are eligible.

They will be able to apply for toll credits soon through Northeast Transportation Connections, a nonprofit group, which has websites set up in and .

No income requirements apply for the free transit passes, which CDOT says will be distributed at seven community sites in the coming months.

CDOT says it will earmark 15% of net toll revenue from the corridor — estimated at $220,000 in the first year — for the equity program. Annual discussions will determine how that money is split between toll credits and transit passes.

“The community will tell us what they want — we won’t do anything without the community input,” Hoover said in an interview.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.

Nearly a dozen motorists were stranded and needed rescue when a burst of heavy evening rainfall hit Denver on Aug. 7, flooding both sides of Interstate 70 through a construction zone near York Street. That is in a section of the highway that was depressed below ground level, replacing a viaduct, as part of the $1.3 billion highway project.

Major construction is now done on the project, with final work expected to wrap up next year. By August, the flood-control system was in place and functional. Kiewit Construction’s , released Tuesday, makes clear that human error was the reason that neither the main pumps nor a backup system kicked on.

“Our investigation of the August malfunction determined that computer settings that manage the pumps were set incorrectly,” a company statement says. “That has been corrected and the main pump system and the backup system have been tested frequently and have effectively managed rainfall since the August event.

“We continue to monitor the system to ensure its continued reliability.”

The fine is based on contractual violations and was set based on Kiewit-Meridiam Partners’ overarching public-private partnership agreement with the Colorado Department of Transportation. The team designed, financed and built the 10-mile highway project, which added express toll lanes between I-25 and Chambers Road and includes a new cover park over the highway in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea. It also will maintain the highway stretch for three decades.

While the flooding incident won’t cost Kiewit much, it did give the project team a black eye.

“We are embarrassed by this event, especially in the light of the many current successes,” Kiewit executive vice president Scott Cassels wrote in an email to a CDOT official the morning after the incident, pledging to investigate what went wrong.

The pump failure spotlighted a key vulnerability before a worse disaster happened.

In the 1.8-mile depressed section in northeast Denver, the drainage system is a vital feature since the highway sits in a trench dug down nearly to the water table. It includes 6-foot-diameter pipes and eight detention ponds, along with automatic pumps to quickly clear any pooling water.

“I’m not going to stand there and say that (the flooding) was a good thing, but we did learn a lot, and we’ve now put in safeguards to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” CDOT project director Bob Hays said in an interview last week. “So to me, that is a good outcome of a pretty bad day.”

The fine will be deducted by CDOT from the $13.6 million payment it owes Kiewit early next year following a mid-February deadline to reach substantial completion on the project. Earlier delays pushed that milestone back from March 22 of this year in the original project schedule.

Meeting the February deadline on time now depends on receiving federal certification of a flood map revision for an overflow channel, according to Kiewit’s latest monthly project report.

Read Kiewit-Meridiam Partners’ corrective-action report:

At least along this roughly 1,000-foot stretch of the remade and widened Interstate 70, children who play in one of Denver’s most polluted neighborhoods will have fewer visceral reminders of the highway that has bisected Elyria-Swansea for nearly six decades.

I-70’s raised viaduct long had towered over the neighborhood and school. Now the arterial’s traffic courses more quietly through a tunnel beneath the new 4-acre park, which officials opened Wednesday in a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

As construction wraps up on the $1.3 billion Central 70 project after more than four years, the event marked the final major milestone. It celebrated the biggest attempt along the 10-mile project zone, which extends east to Aurora, to mitigate the project’s impact on a wary community.

Colorado Department of Transportation project director Bob Hays puts the ballpark cost estimate for the highway cover structure and park at $125 million — or roughly 1 in 10 dollars spent.

Residents and community leaders in Globeville and Elyria-Swansea battled with CDOT over the project for more than a decade before its 2018 groundbreaking, filing several lawsuits. Not all opponents were satisfied with the final designs, which came with a host of other mitigations, including major upgrades for Swansea Elementary.

Now that the project is nearing its end — with express toll-lane testing and ancillary work remaining in coming months — the park’s opening .

“The history of this is going to be, y’all added two toll lanes and took a bunch of homes … and I guess you got a park out of it,” said Alfonso Espino, 26, who stood to the side during Wednesday’s event.

The community organizer lives a block off the highway nearby and remembers attending heated community meetings about the project as a teenager. Ultimately, crews bulldozed 56 homes and 17 businesses to make room for the expanded highway between Brighton and Colorado boulevards.

Contractors, led by Kiewit Construction, tore down the viaduct and replaced it with a depressed highway that’s open-air except where it crosses beneath the cover park. East of Colorado, widening work that goes all the way to Chambers Road in Aurora required much less intrusive construction.

Some neighbors excited for park, but others resent overall project

Despite his misgivings, Espino says he might play soccer on the new fields. Some neighbors of the park were more eager to spend time there.

“I can’t wait for the first walk over there to be able to play on the playground,” Deborah Florez, 53, said of plans with her grandchildren. She lives less than a block away on Clayton Street and has faced health problems, making long walks difficult. “I’m excited about the park.”

CDOT and the contracting group, Kiewit-Meridiam Partners, are hosting a community event at the cover park, which is between Columbine and Clayton streets, from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday.

Denver Parks and Recreation will manage the cover park, which hasn’t yet been named. Swansea Elementary has an agreement to use the new fields for its gym classes during school hours.

“This cover is a major asset to both the school and the community,” Swansea Principal Vanessa Trussell said during Wednesday’s ceremony. “Our students, teachers and the entire community look forward to using this amazing soccer field and having our families enjoy the events lawn and other spaces this park will provide as it bridges the gap over I-70 and connects our communities.”

Other residents who opposed the I-70 project view the park’s opening as little consolation for the project’s years of disruption.

“From my point of view, this never should have happened,” said Drew Dutcher, the president of the Elyria and Swansea Neighborhood Association.

He noted that since green-lighting the Central 70 project, CDOT has reevaluated its approach on major urban highway projects — a point that CDOT executive director Shoshana Lew echoed in her remarks Wednesday, if from a different perspective. She said CDOT learned from the project and now better considers air quality effects and other community impacts in its project planning, under recently adopted greenhouse gas rules.

One recent result of that was the tabling of a potential widening project for Interstate 25 through central Denver.

“But they did that after they widened a highway through a minority, working-class neighborhood,” Dutcher said, referring to Elyria-Swansea’s high concentration of Latino residents. “It����ap about seven or eight years too late to come to Jesus on this. It still is a harm. You’re going to increase traffic (and) increase pollution — this is going to be the result. … So I really can’t celebrate.”

Others lament the impact of redevelopment elsewhere in the neighborhood, including the National Western Center project. More changes are afoot: Elyria-Swansea now has an N-Line commuter rail stop at 48th Avenue, providing a direct link to Union Station, and housing speculators have descended on the neighborhood, pushing rents higher and property values up.

“I think the only thing I’m excited for is to have some of the construction slow down,” said Yadira Sanchez, 45, who lives on Adams Street, about two blocks north of I-70.

She suggested crews were hurriedly planting trees this week in frigid weather to rush the finishing of the park ahead of the ribbon-cutting ceremony. (Hays says those trees are expected to survive the winter but will be replaced if they don’t.)

Sanchez’s family owns two businesses just south of the park, a restaurant called Casa de Sanchez and a butcher named Carniceria Sanchez. Both have struggled to make it through the construction project, she said, and she worries about other forces ahead.

“The gentrification is going to continue to be here,” Sanchez said. “It’s a scary feeling. I don’t know how to be happy over a so-called bridge,” she added, referring to the cover park.

Officials celebrate park while acknowledging highway impact

On Wednesday, Gov. Jared Polis cited the cover as an “innovative mitigation,” and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and other speakers celebrated it as a triumph that helps reconnect the community. Several elected leaders, including U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, similarly applauded the park and cover structure during a visit to the construction site in late June with Mitch Landrieu, an infrastructure adviser to President Joe Biden.

“It’s really one thing to have seen this drawn on paper years ago,” Polis said. “It’s another to be standing here, with a field on one side, in an amphitheater, a state-of-the-art playground on the other side — really seeing the power of community and the power of connectivity.”

But amid the celebration, some speakers gave a firm nod to the highway’s divisive effect on the neighborhood for decades.

“We can’t turn back time and change the fact that a highway was built through the middle of this neighborhood, an emblem of how infrastructure was built in the 1950s and 1960s,” said Stephanie Pollack, the Federal Highway Administration’s acting administrator. “But we can be very clear as we move forward: The purpose of transportation must always be to connect, not to separate.”

When drivers return to the road at 5 a.m. Monday, they’ll notice a roomier configuration that matches I-70’s eastbound side — with fresh asphalt, wider lanes and space for the express toll lane that’s being added as part of the Central 70 project.

The last major traffic shift of the 4-year-old, $1.3 billion highway widening project will place the final 2-mile stretch into its final alignment, roughly between Brighton and Colorado boulevards. Finishing work, including toll equipment testing, will remain in the 10-mile project zone through the rest of the year but have much less impact on traffic, the Colorado Department of Transportation says.

The one-way weekend closure will affect a broader area, between I-270 and Brighton Boulevard. That will allow a detour route that takes westbound I-70 onto I-270, westbound Interstate 76 and southbound Interstate 25, which will take them back toward I-70.

The westbound on-ramp at Brighton will be open but will have intermittent closures, CDOT says.

For now, the left-hand express lanes are open without tolls in each direction through most of the Central 70 project zone, which extends east to Chambers Road in Aurora. Tolling is expected to begin in early 2023, as the project wraps up.

Still underway above a 1,000-foot highway tunnel next to Swansea Elementary School is the installation of a 4-acre cover park.

Components taking shape include a central plaza, a multi-purpose playing field and an events lawn with a stage. The park is expected to open in November.

The closure starts at 10 p.m. Friday at Washington Street and runs through I-70’s interchange with Interstate 270. The Colorado Department of Transportation says the highway will reopen to eastbound traffic in a new configuration by 5 a.m. Monday.

During the weekend, eastbound traffic will be rerouted north on Interstate 25, then to eastbound Interstate 76 and I-270, which will take drivers back onto I-70 in northeast Denver. Westbound traffic won’t be affected by the closure.

Monday’s shift will move eastbound traffic into its final configuration on the south side of the rebuilt I-70. Since early last year, eastbound and westbound traffic have been squeezed into the north half of the highway between Brighton and Colorado boulevards.

The $1.3 billion Central 70 expansion project, which runs from I-25 to Chambers Street in Aurora, is nearing its end after four years. In coming months, crews will complete final touches on the westbound side west of Colorado Boulevard and will finish installation of a 4-acre city park atop a highway cover in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood.

By early morning on July 18, a traffic shift will move eastbound traffic between Brighton and Colorado boulevards, the gnarliest work zone of the $1.3 billion Central 70 Project, into its final placement on the south half of the highway. To the north, the westbound side of the highway still will have a couple more months of finishing work to go. For more than a year, that side has hosted both directions of traffic, squeezed into a temporary configuration that will need to be undone.

But finally, the end of the project is in sight: Its contractors are aiming to complete major construction on the entire 10-mile project this fall.

“I know the community and the traveling public is ready for the project to be over, and we’re excited to deliver a quality project,” said Bob Hays, the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Central 70 project director, during a media tour Wednesday morning on the new eastbound lanes’ freshly set asphalt.

To prepare for the eastbound traffic shift, crews will close all eastbound lanes between Washington Street and Interstate 270 through the coming weekend, starting at 10 p.m. Friday. Traffic will be rerouted on a detour that uses Interstate 76 to I-270. Westbound I-70 won’t be affected.

By 5 a.m. Monday, fresh pavement will welcome the three regular eastbound lanes to the south side of the highway.

The change comes with a request by project officials for drivers to watch their speeds, now that the road will be smoother and roomier. The only thing left in coming months, CDOT says, will be the gradual opening and testing of an express lane that’s already in use, without tolling, east of Colorado Boulevard.

Project won’t fix congestion but may smooth flow

One word of caution: Don’t expect the project to cure I-70 of congestion, even once it’s complete.

The highway carries about 200,000 vehicles a day. Given the project’s limited goals — to bring I-70 up to federal highway standards and add an express lane in each direction — capacity will still be tight.

“What I’ll say is the safety features are going to help improve the flow of traffic,” Hays said. “So we’re going to have the full-width shoulders. We’re going to have standard (acceleration and deceleration) lanes for all of the ramps. … Come Monday, we will have the full length of deceleration lane needed in order to get off (I-70) at Steele and get off at Colorado.”

On the westbound side, crews will spend the next two months removing the median barrier that separated the temporary eastbound lanes and reconfiguring safety equipment. They also will carry out final paving, requiring some overnight lane closures, along with restriping to accommodate the final westbound lanes, including a new express lane.

The target to finish all that up is mid-September.

Since breaking ground in August 2018, the Central 70 project has widened I-70 between Interstate 25 and Chambers Road in Aurora, reconstructing portions of it. Most work east of Colorado has been done for a while.

(Click to enlarge)

But the most complex construction has occurred in the 1.8-mile stretch where a raised highway span used to ferry traffic between Brighton and Colorado, northeast of downtown. Crews built a new, recessed highway north of that viaduct and are working on a 4-acre cover park above it next to Swansea Elementary School, to help knit the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood together.

Construction crews with the contracting team, Kiewit-Meridiam Partners, approached the work in two phases. When the north side of the new highway section was complete in May 2021, project managers diverted all traffic into it to share what would be the eventual westbound lanes.

Then crews demolished the 57-year-old viaduct structure last summer, making room to dig out the rest of the new section — the side that will open to eastbound traffic on Monday.

Recent work made quick progress

Hays stood Wednesday inside the 1,000-foot tunnel beneath the park cover’s structure. He noted features of that lengthy tunnel, including a variable lighting system that attempts to match the brightness outside the tunnel on sunny days, making the transition easier for drivers. A ventilation system includes nine jet fans at the entrance that can quickly clear smoggy air or smoke in the event of a tunnel fire.

While he spoke, Denver firefighters sprayed fire hoses connected to the tunnel’s fire hydrants, testing the water pressure.

Construction moved more quickly during the second phase of tunnel construction.

“The build-out of this eastern bore, the southern half of the cover, has gone so extremely well because we learned all the lessons on the northern bore,” Hays said. “This is just — you know, we call it ‘rinse and repeat.’ ”

Despite early setbacks and delays, the project largely has gone smoothly. The contractors by December are aiming to reach the contractual “substantial completion” mark, which leaves just minor completion work for early next year. If they hit that mark, they’ll earn a $2.5 million incentive under a settlement with CDOT that resolved project cost disputes.

Still, that would be about nine months behind the original schedule’s March target.

Aside from finishing up the westbound lanes, plenty of work remains on the cover park, where structures are starting to take shape. Crews have about four months to build out and landscape its many elements, including a central plaza, a multi-purpose playing field and an events lawn with a stage. They’re aiming for a mid-November opening for the new Denver public park.

Down on the highway, Hays says the express lanes — which extend east to Aurora — likely will begin charging tolls early next year.

The shift, set for early Wednesday morning, is the first of several milestones this year. Others would see all traffic placed in its final configuration between Brighton and Colorado boulevards by late summer and installation of over the highway in the fall.

Since last spring, both directions of I-70 in that 1.8-mile stretch — the final remaining major project zone — have been shoe-horned into the eventual westbound side of a new, recessed highway built north of the interstate’s old viaduct. The May 2021 traffic shift off the viaduct allowed for that 57-year-old structure’s demolition, which made room to dig out the new eastbound side beneath it.

Weather permitting, Wednesday’s rerouting of eastbound traffic will make use of a roughly seven-block portion of that eastbound side, between Steele Street/Vasquez Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard.

The Colorado Department of Transportation says the shift will free up space between the eastbound and westbound lanes so that crews can begin installing intelligent transportation systems that are necessary to operate new tolled express lanes.

The nearly $1.3 billion highway widening and reconstruction project broke ground in 2018, running from Interstate 25 to Chambers Road in Aurora. The project aimed to bring the highway up to modern standards, with full shoulders, and add a managed toll lane in each direction while leaving space for a second express lane in a future project. Construction in the central and eastern project zones is largely done.

The contracting team, Kiewit-Meridiam Partners, reported the Central 70 project to be 85% complete as of the most recent monthly progress report.

The project has made smoother progress in the last year after weathering earlier setbacks that resulted in delays and added project costs that the contracting team largely shouldered through a major debt refinancing. The “substantial completion” milestone, originally planned for this month, is now forecast for late January 2023 — though CDOT project officials recently said they were working with KMP to reel that back to December.

In the western project zone, project workers recently finished pouring a concrete deck over the eastbound side, extending the previously installed westbound cover over the entire highway. The cover essentially creates a 1,000-foot tunnel between Columbine and Clayton streets and will serve as the foundation for the new park.

Community meetings produced that includes a central plaza, a playground, basketball courts, a multi-purpose playing field, an events lawn, a splash pad and a community space.

Crews on the Central 70 project were expected Friday to finish tearing down the last part of the elevated span near the Union Pacific Railroad crossing, project spokeswoman Stacia Sellers said.

The demolition has been the noisiest stage of the nearly $1.3 billion project, rattling nearby homes and blowing dust blocks away despite crews’ efforts to limit the impact. The project, which broke ground three years ago, entered a new phase in late May when both directions of I-70 traffic were shifted to new highway lanes built north of the viaduct between Brighton and Colorado boulevards, allowing for the 57-year-old viaduct’s removal.

Crews will continue digging southward to expand the new recessed highway to its final width. Until then, the eventual westbound side is accomodating both directions of traffic in a tight configuration.

The demolition included the use of up to 18 excavators working simultaneously at different locations, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Dump trucks carried away about 4,500 loads of debris for recycling, Sellers said.

The overall project will result in an expanded I-70 between Interstate 25 and Chambers Road in Aurora, with a new tolled express lane added in each direction. East of Colorado Boulevard, the project is mostly complete.

The most recent project update from the contracting team, Kiewit-Meridiam Partners, shows schedule gains that have overcome some previous delays. It’s on track to reach the “substantial completion” milestone in December 2022.

Kiewit Construction recently of its city noise variance through the end of the project.

The project’s most prominent component will take shape in the next year as crews install over the highway next to Swansea Elementary. About half of that “cap” is in place now, with drivers passing through a 1,000-foot tunnel built with several safety systems.

Asphalt production relies heavily on oil, and the Colorado Department of Transportation said not enough will be delivered in time for a paving blitz that was planned during an Interstate 70 westbound-only closure in northeast Denver on Friday night through Monday morning. The closure has been rescheduled for 10 p.m. July 30 through 5 a.m. Aug. 2.

The project contractors are nearly finished with the middle segment of the 10-mile project between Colorado Boulevard and Quebec Street, while more intensive work continues in the west section. Crews had enough asphalt to complete paving of the middle section’s eastbound lanes during a single-direction weekend closure that ended early Monday, Central 70 project spokeswoman Stacia Sellers said.

“The oil shortage is what caused us to push the (second) closure out a week,” Sellers said, noting that suppliers have told CDOT’s contractors the shortage comes both from and actual supply. But no further delays to the Central 70 project are anticipated, she said.

At the end of the month, all westbound lanes of I-70 will be closed between Interstate 270 and Colorado Boulevard. The detour will follow I-270 to Interstate 76 and I-25, reconnecting to I-70 at the Mousetrap.