Which Interstate 70 Closure Hits You, Sept 18 or Sept 25?

Whichever direction you are driving decides which weekend hurts. Westbound Interstate 70 shuts at Kipling Street from 7 p.m. Friday, September 18 until 6 a.m. Tuesday, September 22, and eastbound shuts on the same stretch from 7 p.m. Friday, September 25 until 6 a.m. Tuesday, September 29, the Colorado Department of Transportation announced on September 14.

Each closure runs up to 83 hours, and both land on the stretch that carries Denver and airport traffic west toward the Front Range. Our Colorado road trip itinerary starts on this exact run of highway, so the timing matters if your aspen weekend is already booked.

The Two Weekends Are Mirror Images

CDOT is treating each direction as its own job rather than narrowing both at once. That means the first weekend only blocks people heading out of Denver, and the second weekend only blocks people coming back.

The agency says full closures let crews work more efficiently, shorten the overall schedule and reduce repeated traffic impacts. In practice it concentrates the pain into two long blocks instead of spreading lane restrictions across a month.

The Detour Is Four Surface Streets

Traffic comes off the interstate and back on through the Kipling Street Interchange, following West 44th Avenue, Ward Road, West 58th Avenue and Ralston Road, and Wadsworth Boulevard. Kipling Street itself is closed in both directions at the interchange.

CDOT puts the delay at 30 minutes or more. That is a surface street detour through Wheat Ridge and Arvada rather than a parallel highway, so the figure assumes normal weekend volumes and not a Friday evening exodus.

Ramps Close Differently Each Weekend

On the westbound weekend, the Wadsworth Boulevard on-ramps to westbound I-70 close in both the northbound and southbound directions, and CDOT routes drivers along West 44th Avenue to Ward Road instead.

On the eastbound weekend the pattern flips. The Ward Road on-ramp to eastbound I-70 closes, and the detour runs West 44th Avenue to Wadsworth Boulevard. Getting these backwards is the easiest way to add a second detour to your first one.

A Third Weekend Is Already Held in Reserve

The project page lists a backup window of 7 p.m. Friday, October 2 through 6 a.m. Tuesday, October 6. It is not scheduled work, but it is booked, which is the detail worth carrying into an October plan.

CDOT has not published what would trigger it or how much notice it would give. Anyone driving this corridor on the first weekend of October should treat the highway as provisional until the agency says otherwise.

What the Crews Are Actually Doing

The work is a 5 million dollar repair of three bridges: the eastbound and westbound I-70 spans over Kipling Street and the westbound span over Garrison Street. It started August 2 and is expected to finish in late October.

On the Kipling bridges the method is hydro-demolition, which uses high-pressure water to strip damaged concrete off the deck before it is rebuilt. That is why the closures are continuous rather than nightly; the deck cannot carry traffic between shifts.

“Maintaining Colorado’s bridges is essential to providing a safe and reliable transportation system,” Regional Transportation Director Jessica Myklebust said when the project opened in August. Outside the extended weekends, crews work 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., Sunday through Thursday.

The Rest of the Corridor Is Under Construction Too

Kipling is the metro end of a highway being rebuilt in several places at once. Further west, the 900 million dollar Floyd Hill project has run its own overnight closures between Exit 244 and U.S. 6.

Those particular Floyd Hill dates have passed, and no current closure there is announced. The point is that one clean check of the Kipling dates is not the same as a clean check of the whole drive, and CDOT points travelers to COtrip for live conditions.