How CDOT plans to make Dowd Junction safer

Dowd Junction, where Gore Creek meets the Eagle River just west of Vail, is a transportation chokepoint in Eagle County, with no frontage roads to supplement Interstate 70 and curves that can be problematic in bad weather. For that reason, it’s been a focus in recent years of a wide variety of safety measures by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT).

Most recently, CDOT installed 18 new variable speed limit (VSL) signs between mile markers 169 and 173 to replace older, static speed-limit signs. The new LED signs, which came online in the middle of January, automatically adjust the speed limit based on congestion, traffic patterns and adverse weather conditions impacting visibility and traction on the road surface.

“This milestone represents CDOT’s investment into technologies to enhance driver safety and improve traffic flow along one of Colorado’s most heavily traveled mountain corridors,” CDOT Executive Director Shoshana Lew said in a press release. “Statewide, weather- and congestion-based VSL algorithms are among the cutting-edge tools CDOT uses to enhance motorist safety.”

The Federal Highway Administration estimates VSLs can reduce total crashes by 34% and crashes with injuries or fatalities by 51%.

“CDOT recognizes that Dowd Canyon is one of our heavier traveled mountain roadways without the resiliency of a frontage road,” the CDOT release read. “The investment of VSLs in this location was chosen as one more way to reduce crashes on this critical section of I-70.”

Dowd Junction, as it’s more commonly referred to locally, is named for a lumberyard owner whose land was deep in the shade of Dowd Canyon, making it dark, icy and therefore one of the most dangerous stretches of I-70 running east to west between Denver and Grand Junction. CDOT officials have been focusing on it for years.

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In 2008, the median barrier was raised to block oncoming headlight glare, followed by lighting upgrades in 2013 as part of the Vail-to-Glenwood Fiber Project. Other improvements include extending the Minturn interchange eastbound on-ramp and adding wrong-way detection signs, rockfall fencing, better drainage, wildlife fencing and now the VSLs.

Dowd no longer ranks among the most dangerous stretches of I-70 in terms of the number of crashes, according to CDOT I-70 Corridor communications manager Austyn Dineen.

“Vail Pass has the highest crash rate on Colorado’s I-70 mountain corridor,” Dineen wrote in an email, adding the state ranks road stretches based on the number of crashes per million vehicle miles traveled.

“Dowd Canyon ranks behind Vail Pass, Glenwood Canyon, the Eisenhower Tunnel, and the Copper-to-Frisco stretch for the highest crash rates on I-70,” Dineen added. “Dowd Canyon, around Mile Point 171, is still a Level of Service of Safety of 4, which means it is in the category of still having the highest potential for crash reduction.”

Lighting was installed in Dowd Canyon in 2015 to mitigate a high number of nighttime crashes, Dineen explained, and based on CDOT data, that’s led to a 32% reduction in nighttime crashes. That project began as part of the 2013 Vail-to-Glenwood Fiber Project and was further enhanced during the Dowd Canyon Variable Speed Limit (VSL) project.

“Today, this stretch remains the only uniquely well-lit interstate section in Eagle County, with most fixtures recently upgraded in 2024,” Dineen stated. “CDOT maintains the system through periodic nighttime inspections and by responding to reported outages.”

Asked about lighting on other stretches of I-70 through Eagle County, specifically on and off ramps in areas such as EagleVail and East Vail, where lights are out and darkness often obscures the ramps, Dineen said that, “per Colorado statute, street lighting within city limits is the municipality’s responsibility and maintained by the town.”

Dineen was not able to address the loss of CDOT workforce housing on the State Land Board parcel just west of Dowd Junction in EagleVail and whether there’s been a reduction in local maintenance workers and plow drivers as a result. She said CDOT offers stipends to supplement worker housing in ski towns where the cost of housing is prohibitively high.

CDOT’s workforce mobile homes on the parcel were removed to make way for an affordable housing project that was facilitated by a new state law in 2023. However, the land board appraisal of the parcel was considerably higher than the town of Avon’s.

Avon is trying to annex the property and partner with Eagle County and Vail to build affordable housing on the site and is therefore working toward a new appraisal of the land. At this point, the parcel is being used for dirt storage required by a housing project in Vail.

“Putting together the funding to do a large-scale project like this takes time,” said state Sen. Dylan Roberts, who sponsored the State Land Board housing bill. “But I’m also frustrated that it’s not happening soon enough for the locals and the workforce that this could really benefit in the valley. We thought this would be underway at this point when we passed the legislation in 2023 and started the process of moving CDOT off of the property to build this housing that we desperately need.”

Roberts said he is hopeful the new appraisal process will lead to the project moving forward.