Speed Harmonization Sunday, 1/22.
January 20th, 2012 | 
Author: CDOT has announced that speed harmonization will be in place this Sunday, 1/22/12, beginning between 11:00 a.m and noon, through mid to late afternoon. Colorado State Patrol and local law enforcement will “pace” cars at 45-55 mph based on road conditions from Silverthorne to the bottom or Floyd Hill. If you have experienced Speed Harmonization, what did you think? We’d love to hear your comments via the Comment section below.
Congratulations Randall M., our first winner of the “Treats for Tweets” promotion. His prize is a one day Copper Mountain lift ticket. Big thanks to Copper Mountain Resort! The next drawing is in two weeks. Tweet your I70 traffic or travel observation to @goi70 and be entered to win lift tickets and other prizes.
Weekend Travel Forecast:
Snow is expected this weekend with the heaviest snow falling Saturday evening. Winter driving conditions have a big effect on traffic, so be prepared for potentially longer delays, and for the possibility that traffic might last later into the evening than usual. Keep an eye on current conditions via GoI70.com/mobile.
Westbound to the Mountains
On this weekend in previous years, Saturday delays started to build soon after 6:30 a.m., peaked around 8:00 and didn’t drop of until after 11:00 a.m. Sunday morning WB traffic generally tends to be a bit lighter than Saturday, but with the potential big powder day on Sunday, congestion might be heavier than usual and follow the Saturday WB pattern.
Eastbound to Front Range
Previous Saturdays, cars started convening on I70 around 2:30 p.m., congestion peaked at 5:00 and dropped dramatically after 6:00 p.m. Previous Sundays, I70 traffic started earlier at 1:30 p.m., traffic peaked earlier at 4:30 and dropped off soon after 6:00 pm.
Enjoy the snow! Please let us hear from you this weekend with a message to @goi70 via Twitter!
Posted in News | 
Tags: CDOT, GoI70, I70, mountain travel, moutain snow, pacing, powder day, skier traffic, speed harmonization, travel forecast, Treats for Tweets, Twitter
7 Responses to “Speed Harmonization Sunday, 1/22.”
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Speed harmonization is awful! Thanks for adding 2 hours to our drive. We have driven this route almost every Sunday for 13 ski seasons. We have rarely encountered significant delays if we leave Vail by 1 pm. Today was the most painful drive ever. It was ridiculous to be driving 35 miles per hour on the I-70. Especially when we got to dry roads. Today should not have taken us 4 hours to get home! We flew over the Vail Pass which should have been the worst part of our drive. Little did we know the snow covered Pass was going to be the best part of the drive.
It just took me three hours to travel from Copper Mountain to Lakewood behind a pace car. I have only previously experienced this length of a drive during “poor” road conditions, which was not nearly the case today. The harmonization also seemed to increase the commute time, extending it perhaps 30-45 minutes. This certainly makes visiting the mountains less inviting for me.
Less of a personal concern than commute time, though a goal of the harmonization, is improved safety. While the harmonization may have improved safety by encouraging a more consistent speed between vehicles, I still witnessed some very frustrated drivers weaving through traffic (both in the clutch-killing stop-n-go crawl up to the tunnels and during the 35 mph paced drive to Floyd Hill.
I also noted more vehicles than normal utilizing the side/frontage roads today.
Overall, I’m not enamored with CDOT’s implementation of harmonization since I’ve always felt that the commute already takes too long and have rarely felt it to be unsafe (due to speed differentials).
Speed harmonization is completely moronic !! I would like to see ANY study that shows that it prevents accidents. In the 25 years I have been driving the I-70 corridor, I have almost never seen an accident, and certainly less accidents than I see all over the Denver area. Why are only I-70 corridor drivers being subjected to this?
Is there any information that shows that the I-70 mountain corridor has a higher accident rate than the average stretch of Interstate?
Has there been any information generated that shows where the tests accomplished already on I-70 prevented any accidents?
If you really want to do something to make I-70 safer and improve traffic flow, start issuing traffic tickets to all the drivers that block the left lane. The real problem at the Twin Tunnels is the drivers that get scared going around a few corners, need to slow down, but do it in the left lane. If they aren’t comfortable with the speeds in that area, no problem, just pull over into the right lane and let the rest of us by !!!!!
Please stop penalizing everyone for the selfish behavior of others.
Epic failure. My first grader knows that when you start backing up traffic at noon, it’s only going to make it worse by 2:00. How much did this terrible experiment cost?
We left at the same time last week and had no traffic. This week, backed up the entire way.
We left Breckenridge at 3:00 Sunday afternoon and it took 5 hours to get home (Erie) due to the 20 minute stop and go procedures! It took us 2 hours to just get to the tunnel. This was the most ridiculous idea ever. I saw more cars that either over heated or ran out of gas from having to wait. I had to actually go to the bathroom on the highway after 3 hours of stop and go. The roads were dry and no accidents.
What in the world are they thinking???
I experienced your debacle of “speed harmonization” on 1/29/12. There was a period of 45 minutes where we did not move! I am not from Colorado. It will be a long time until I come back to spend my money in your state after that hellish time. The traffic in Utah is much better- so is the snow. Too bad you screwed this one up. From the looks of the other comments (and the thousands of others stuck with me that Sunday) your operation will drive thousands of tourists away. I’m sure the resorts, businesses and politicians will love that…
Fools.
Thanks to all for the comments on Speed Harmonization. I just can’t resist to point out that “WE” (i.e. GoI70.com and the I70 Coalition) are not part of CDOT. We do not make decisions on things such as metering and speed harmonization. In this case, we are just the messenger between the traveling public, mountain communities and the Colorado Department of Transportation. Again, thanks for the feedback!