2025 Mountain States Best Projects
Award of Merit, Highway/Bridge: North I-25 Express Lanes, Johnstown to Fort Collins
North I-25 Express Lanes, Johnstown to Fort Collins
Johnstown, Loveland, Windsor and Fort Collins, Colo.
Award of Merit
Owner Colorado Dept. of Transportation
Lead Design Firm RS&H
General Contractor Kraemer North America - IHC JV
Scope for this progressive design-build effort included reconstruction of 14.5 miles of I-25 and a buffer-separated tolled express lane with 12-ft inside and outside shoulders in each direction.
Three interchanges were reconfigured and two others partially reconstructed. Crews also installed 17 new bridges, realigned frontage roads, widened two miles of US 34, eliminated two floodplain encroachments over I-25 and made numerous mobility enhancements.
Coordination with third parties ensured that work progressed smoothly along the three railroad crossings, four FEMA-regulated floodplain crossings and more than 20 irrigation crossings along the route.
To expedite floodplain permitting, the team developed two-dimensional hydraulic models, while an irrigation retrofit toolkit provided multiple strategies for upgrading irrigation crossings with limited impact to operations.
Rehabilitating existing concrete box culverts presented challenges due to irrigation schedule constraints. The solution involved two techniques: The first, slip-lining, had crews inserting pipes into culverts and backfilling them to create new, durable structures; the second innovation involved using expanded polystyrene fills over culverts.
