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Steamboat plans for work on Pine Grove Road, bridge upgrades

Work to rehabilitate two bridges downtown is expected to move forward this summer

Motorists wait at the stoplight on the corner of Pine Grove Road and Central Park Drive on Friday, Feb. 17, 2023, just past a line of potholes in the roadway. Design work to replace Pine Grove Road will start this summer, with construction starting in 2024.
Dylan Anderson/Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs is starting the process to design improvements on Pine Grove Road just south of downtown, a project that is expected to essentially replace the road in the summers of 2024 and 2025.

Public Works Director Jon Snyder said while the city works to mill and overlay roads each May and June, analysis of Pine Grove shows the roadway is in such bad shape that it needs to be replaced.

“We’ll spend this year designing and then the next two years doing construction,” Snyder said. “Pine Grove has gotten bad enough where we can’t do (mill and overlay) anymore.”



Pine Grove Road is a key route that decades ago was the path U.S. Highway 40 took through Steamboat, but the road now connects services such as the UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center to the highway. The work is expected to impact the road between U.S. 40 and Mt. Werner Road.

Snyder said the Public Works Department has a consultant who studies the city’s roads, and the consultant found the pavement on Pine Grove has deteriorated too much to perform a mill and overlay.



Because of that, Snyder said the city needs to replace the road, including the subgrade surface that the pavement currently rests on. The project will also add other utility improvements such as sidewalks and storm water drainage, as parts of Pine Grove Road don’t currently have any curbs.

“It’s going to be a fairly major project,” Snyder said. “Nothing exciting this year, just a lot of behind the scenes work, a lot of design, and construction the next couple of summers after that.”


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One project that is scheduled to move ahead this summer involves rehabilitating two bridges over Soda Creek near the corner of Oak and 11th streets. Bids from contractors on the project needed to be submitted to the city by Friday, Feb. 17.

Because the bridges are within 100 feet of each other, the city is tackling the projects at the same time to minimize traffic impacts, save money and limit construction to one year.  

Design work for these replacements started in 2020, and the project will reduce erosion caused by Soda Creek during high runoff periods. It is expected to extend the life of the existing bridges by 10 years or more.


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