{"id":25882,"date":"2024-08-29T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cdot-to-replace-guardrail-on-u-s-550-just-north-of-purgatory-resort\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:29:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:29:30","slug":"cdot-to-replace-guardrail-on-u-s-550-just-north-of-purgatory-resort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cdot-to-replace-guardrail-on-u-s-550-just-north-of-purgatory-resort\/","title":{"rendered":"CDOT to replace guardrail on U.S. 550 just north of Purgatory Resort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Department of Transportation crews close U.S. Highway 550 north of Purgatory Resort on April 18 while Bo Dean's Towing recovered the wreckage of a semitrailer that crashed a day before. (Courtesy of Colorado Department of Transportation)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Colorado Department of Transportation will replace a guardrail on U.S. Highway 550 at Cascade Curve to help improve safety along that stretch of road.<\/p>\n

The guardrail location is about 2 miles north of Purgatory, an area where two semitrailers have crashed since April, according to CDOT.<\/p>\n

Those semitrailers were traveling south on U.S. 550 when they \u201chit the existing concrete barriers and went over the north-facing embankment into Cascade Creek,\u201d CDOT spokeswoman Adair Christensen said in an email to the Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSafety improvements for this dangerous hairpin curve have been in the works as far as three years back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The existing guardrail will be replaced with a larger permanent concrete barrier, which also will wrap around onto U.S. Forest Service Road 783.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis new permanent barrier design is anchored into the ground below and is intended to mitigate the chances of vehicles leaving the highway in the case of a crash,\u201d Christensen said.<\/p>\n

Christensen said the U.S. 550 guardrail project will be similar to the \u201cmore fortified barrier design\u201d CDOT built in 2018 on the west side of Wolf Creek Pass near the scenic overlook.<\/p>\n

\u201cMotorists tend to let their guard down and speed up, not expecting a dangerous hairpin curve ahead. This new barrier should withstand crashes better than the existing barrier and guardrail, which we\u2019ve had to fix or replace quite frequently over the years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Roadwork will begin Tuesday, and will continue weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The project is expected to wrap up by early November, Christensen said.<\/p>\n

Travel between Durango and Silverton could be delayed for up to 15 minutes at the portable traffic signals near the work area.<\/p>\n

mhollinshead@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction at Cascade Curve begins Tuesday; project meant to improve safety<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[576,950,28,712,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-department-of-transportation","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-purgatory","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79139,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25882\/revisions\/79139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25882"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}