Vail Pass closures vary from year to year, and often depend on weather and traffic volume
A week in mid-January was a particularly tough stretch
Vail Daily archive photo
It seems like Interstate 70 over Vail Pass frequently closes in the winter. That isn’t entirely true. As you’d guess, the pass closes more during hard winters or during big storms.
The Vail Daily recently asked the Colorado Department of Transportation for a record of how often the pass closes in the winter. The request was for closures of more than two hours, with the closure area between West Vail and the top of the pass.
• 29: Vail pass closures of more than two hours in the 2017 calendar year — the most in the past decade.
• 5: Hours of average delay during those closures.
• 9: Closures of more than two hours in the 2020 calendar year.
• 4.3: Hours of average delay during those closures.
The data provided breaks the closure information into full years, not winters. It’s no surprise that lighter winters bring fewer closures.
For instance, there were only five closures in 2015. But the closures were lengthy, caused by heavy-truck spin-outs, multi-car accidents and safety closures. Those five closures on average lasted about six hours. The longest, caused by a safety closure, lasted nearly 14 hours.
Marc Wentworth, director of the Vail Public Safety Communications Center, said those safety closures are usually for spun-out vehicles. Traffic is stopped until those incidents can be cleared, to protect emergency responders. Emergency vehicles at accident scenes are sometimes hit by motorists, often causing significant damage.
The busiest year for pass closures was 2017, when the pass closed 29 times, with the closures lasting an average of five hours. The longest of the 2017 closures came Jan. 10, when the highway was closed for nearly 14 hours for a safety closure.
The 2019 calendar year — a winter that had a lot of avalanche and avalanche mitigation activity — saw the pass closed 26 times.
Wentworth, a longtime resident, recalled that the pass didn’t close much in the 1980s and 1990s, despite the fact the roads weren’t maintained the way they are today. Traffic volume was one factor, of course. And, Wentworth said, driving on icy and snow-packed roads was more common.
As traffic volume has grown in this century, the Colorado Legislature has created winter-driving laws that include requiring commercial trucks to carry chains between Nov. 1 and May 31. The rules also include traction laws for private vehicles. Fines for violators who cause a road closure can be steep — as much as $500 plus surcharges for commercial vehicles. Those commercial vehicles cause some, but not most, of the pass closures. On the other hand, commercial vehicles were involved in all three pass closures this year, on Jan. 15, 17 and 18, the day of, and following, the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday holiday weekend.
Vail Fire Chief Mark Novak recalled that the series of storms that week caused avalanches in other parts of the state as well as snarling traffic on the interstate.
Novak, whose department responds to accidents on the pass, said traffic volume, combined with weather, can make travel difficult on the pass. Closing the pass for longer than a couple of hours can also make it hard to get around in Vail. With longer closures, Novak said there’s nowhere for stuck motorists to go. That, in turn, can make it hard for first responders to get to calls around town.
“The real key for the (interstate) corridor is to be able to get in front (of the closure) and divert trucks at Dotsero,” Novak said. “That really helps.”
This story is from VailDaily.com.
