Overview

Phase 1 of the City of Colorado Springs/Pikes Peak Regional Transportation Authority’s portion of the improvements within the Woodmen Road Corridor will focus on providing three continuous lanes in each direction from I-25 to Stinson. It will also include the replacement of the existing Woodmen Road/Academy Boulevard Intersection with a grade-separated interchange. After a thorough Environmental document and design analysis, the City of Colorado Springs found the interchange solution to be the best value for the City and the traveling public. The proposed interchange will raise Woodmen Road above Academy Boulevard, allowing traffic to flow freely north and south along Academy. The east-west traveler on Woodmen will experience significantly reduced delays due to the absence of Academy Boulevard traffic. Improvements on Woodmen Road will extend from Campus Drive, near Carl’s Jr., on the west, to Stinson Road, east of Sam’s Club, on the east. Construction on Academy Boulevard will be limited to the portion of roadway between Shrider on the north and the Cottonwood Creek bridge on the south.

Other Features

In addition to the solution at the intersection, this first project will be introducing a much desired multimodal feature to Woodmen Road with the inclusion of east-west bike lanes and sidewalks. The City and their design team organized a landscape aesthetics committee comprised of area neighborhood and business representatives who met to discuss and select the desired look and feel of the entire corridor from I-25 to Powers Boulevard. The committee organized a plan utilizing a form and function that would reduce water and maintenance requirements but maintain a highly classic look. Traffic noise is always an issue to residents along a busy corridor and the Woodmen corridor is not an exception. This project addressed this issue by studying the sound distribution along Woodmen. This study found that modifications to the existing solutions are necessary. These modifications, if approved by the residents, will affect the height of the sound walls at the Brookwood and Yorkshire neighborhoods and Villages at
Woodmen Apartments.