Link to Q&A from Denver Post

A Denver Post reporter recently sat down with Don Hunt, outgoing executive director of CDOT, to ask him to reflect on what has been done in key corridors to improve the state's highways, what still needs doing, how it can be paid for, and what technology has in store for motorists.

Q: Colorado faces major transportation challenges. What are the most difficult ones?

Hunt: What I increasingly hear all around the state is the importance of the I-70 corridor, from at least the ski resorts in the west to Denver International Airport in the east. Certainly things are being done along that corridor but we're really playing around the edges, too.

In the mountains, we're trying to get more out of the system with stepped up operations and maintenance to decrease those delays on Saturday and Sundays, and we're adding the peak-period shoulder lane, which is somewhere between genius and craziness. We're adding 2 feet of pavement essentially in order to open up that interior shoulder to traffic on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and charge a toll for it. There are only a few places in the country that are doing that — Massachusetts, for one — but no one is doing it in the climate we have above 8,000 feet. We'll have that lane open late next fall. We only have enough money to do eastbound.

To read more, please click on the link above.