Editor:
At the Wellington town meeting on June 14, a Colorado Department of Transportation engineer referenced a limited historical analysis of the eastern stretch of I-25/Frontage Road in Wellington. The analysis shows a limited accident history and thus CDOT would not be prioritizing their budget to address what is a extremely critical safety need for our town.
CDOT’s analysis seemed to be limited when taking the full stretch from the Meadows condos where the recent truck accident occurred all the way to the northern overpass. The CDOT engineer said their review was limited to only a small section of that stretch of I-25 and that the stats indicated the semi truck accident was unusual and uncommon.
To me, this analysis seems like a lackluster effort. At a time when our state representative commented that CDOT is building new administrative buildings near Denver, the lack of full attention to the full state’s (in this case Wellington’s) critical safety needs seems preposterous and missing the mark.
As a father driving my 5-month-old home after dark in the winter months, I cannot stand the thought that CDOT will not participate in fixing this clear safety gap for our expanding town. We are bursting! We need safe routes home at night!
The same CDOT engineer commented that 24,000 vehicles drive this stretch of I-25 every day. What the historical analysis of accidents did not account for was the dramatic increase in new construction (now family homes) which require usage of the frontage road less then 10 feet from the 75-mile-an-hour I-25 freeway. It does not require a physics major to realize that the potential for a tragic and avoidable head on collision (especially at night) from oncoming northbound freeway traffic and southbound frontage road traffic would be catastrophic.
The answer is clear and common-sense logic. We need a safety barrier between I-25 and the eastern frontage road in Wellington.
Please help by calling our/your elected State and Federal representatives to voice your concern (as I have) on this issue.
Thanks all. Let’s make Wellington safe together!!!!
Andrew Davison
Wellington