COLORADO SPRINGS — Starting on Thursday, Airport Road will be closed between Lakewood Circle, and Audubon Drive, which is just west of Academy.
Traffic will be detoured to Fountain Boulevard and Pikes Peak Avenue.
The closure is expected to last until mid-June.
The closure is due to a construction project to work on the sewer system.
On Wednesday, the day before the closure, eastbound Airport Road will be reduced to one lane at Lakewood Circle and the intersection, Lakewood Circle will be fully closed for construction crews. Crews are doing this to remove a raised median island, the closure will last from 7 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.
This is all part of the first of a two-part project to replace the Airport Road bridge over Spring Creek.
During the summer the creek drains at high flow rates and has flooded the bridge on several occasions, including in the summer of 2020.
"It didn't have any pedestrian facilities. It's also extremely undersized from a hydraulic standpoint, so we had a lot of overtopping of this structure during storm events," said City of Colorado Springs Senior Engineer Aaron Egbert. "And it's right next to a fire station, so you really need good, solid, safe infrastructure next to a fire station."
According to the City of Colorado Spring's website, the bridge currently does not accommodate pedestrian traffic. Part of the project will be to increase the bridge's length and build sidewalks across the bridge on both sides of Airport Road.
Construction for the bridge's replacement is expected to start in the Fall after the summer monsoon season has passed.
The full project is expected to be completed by Spring 2022.
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