ABMB was involved in the design of this project, Colorado's first CFI
After pulling an all-nighter, Loveland traffic engineers partied into the late morning Wednesday at Madison Avenue and Eisenhower Boulevard, celebrating the apparent success of their weird-looking new traffic system.
The continuous-flow intersection, an arrangement that causes people to cringe when they view a diagram of it, worked pretty much like a charm from the time the first vehicles moved through it during the predawn.
“When you look at it top-down, it doesn’t seem to make any sense,” city engineer Dave Klockeman said as he and other city employees watched southbound traffic swing through the signals on Madison north of Eisenhower.
“But when you’re at street level, it works great.”
Engineers and signal technicians worked through the night to get the timing right for Wednesday’s first users of the intersection.
Nothing seems more counterintuitive than moving traffic on a four-lane street across the oncoming lanes and into a double left-turn lane that sidles up to the corner. The very nature of it defies description.
But Wednesday’s opening seemed to prove what public works director Keith Reester said months ago when construction started at the intersection.
“People might not get roundabouts,” Reester said then, “but they know what to do at traffic signals.” The design is an import, the first of its kind in Northern Colorado, and was pioneered in Louisiana and Salt Lake City.
Kevin Westergard didn’t seem to be the slightest bit puzzled by the odd lane shift as he drove his painting van south on Madison and made the left turn onto eastbound Eisenhower.
“It’s different, that’s for sure,” he said. “But it’s really not some big mystery. I guess a few people might get thrown for a loop. But, hey, it’s hard to see how you can go wrong.”
The opening of the first phase of the intersection — the block-long stretch of Madison north of Eisenhower — also signaled the closure of Madison on the south side to accommodate construction of phase two.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed for any commercial purpose. The remaining work will take another two months or so.
A final date is hard to fix because the prime contractor on the job, Loveland’s Coulson Excavating Inc., has been racing ahead of schedule, baited by a $2,500-per-day incentive to move the project forward.
Meanwhile, the engineers who swarmed over the intersection on Wednesday are looking for ways to improve the already free-flowing traffic pattern.
“There are a couple of little timing bugs,” senior civil engineer Jeff Bailey said. “But we’re going to be working on those tonight.”