Abandon Glenwood Canyon...

[FoxtArt]

Hindsight is 20/20 but in retrospect, it would likely have been easier if I-70 had followed the route of US 285 and 50 over Monarch Pass to Montrose and then up to Grand Junction from the beginning. Glenwood Canyon is certainly an engineering marvel but it's always been "high maintenance" and always will be. And realistically speaking, I don't think there's a viable alternative that is anywhere reasonably close to the Glenwood corridor.

So my guess is that they'll do what they can to patch Glenwood Canyon and like the wildfires that ravage the mountains every year, periodic Glenwood Canyon closures are just going to be something we have to live with.

"Way back when" it might have been possible to build a new route that roughly follows Cottonwood Pass, heading South from Gypsum, crosses Gypsum Creek and then goes over the relatively flat ground (at least compared to the areas North of Glenwood Canyon, which is extremely mountainous) and approach Glenwood Springs from the Southeast:



But starting a project like that from scratch now would be ruinously expensive and while patching Glenwood Canyon until the next big mud slide pretty much "kicks the can down the road", in practical and political terms, it's the most reasonable course of action.

I'm glad they didn't do the monarch pass route tbh. On paper it's decent, but monarch pass does not an easy one for an interstate to cross. The route from GJ - > Denver is 3 hours, while Montrose -> Pueblo alone is 4 1/2 right now (GJ is 5.5), which would not be improved much by an interstate. In any event, it would add an average of 2 hours to almost every trans-divide commute even as an interstate. East of Montrose climbing into Gunnison is also not a great interstate pathway, traffic would be 25 mph over both sections with tons of switchbacks on an interstate no matter how you cut it.

The south gypsum passage you mentioned is kind of interesting though. Never have thought of that. Compared to what they blow on some infrastructure projects it's not necessarily unachievable either.

Or we could just do our own "chunnel" and just make a 100 mile straight tunnel under all the bullshit compared to what we paid on stimulus even that would be "chump change"

ETA: I'm obviously not serious about a tunnel, I might be dumb on some things, nobody is that dumb.

ETA 2: Although we could spend an extra 90 billion dollars to build a park on top of the tunnel for all the homeless people to shoot up in. Win/win on the marketing.