GOLDEN – While digging a long trench along Interstate 70, Tom Crago knows he's bound to dig up his fair share of bulky boulders.
"It's awful rocky but that's why they call it the Rocky Mountains," said Crago. He is helping to carve a wide space for truckers to take their chains off just east of the Eisenhower Tunnel. "We're digging pipe in for what they call chain station," said Crago. The chain station is one of several chain up/chain down areas along I-70 west of Denver that Bernie Guevara with the Colorado Department of Transportations says are being built this winter. "We'll provide locations and places for truck drivers to chain up and also to chain down," said Guevara. Describing their efforts at their annual transportation meeting in Golden, CDOT staff said chain up stations will go from 11 to 18 this winter, giving truckers plenty of room to put on chains safely away from I-70 traffic. "(We'll have) as many as 170 additional truck spaces by the time this is all said and done. We are increasing the existing numbers of spaces by as much as 40 percent," said Guevara. Along with extra chain stations, CDOT says that their courtesy patrol, which picks up stranded motorists, will this year also include truckers who have broken down. "We will be able to provide assistance to the truckers that get stranded on this corridor," said Guevara. CDOT will also be conducting inspections to make sure truckers have chains and are partnering up with a private company to sell chains to those truckers who forgot to bring them into the mountains. "(It's an) independent patrol that will be providing chains to trucks, to truck drivers that end up in this corridor unprepared, they will be able to sell chains," said Guevara. The hope is that by focusing on making it easier for truckers to chain up during snow storms, fewer will get stuck and then close I-70, which can mean long delays and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. "It's $800,000 an hour every time this highway is closed," said Guevara.