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Longmont, CDOT outline grade-separated plan and multimodal upgrades for Hover Street-Highway 119
Summary
City staff and the Colorado Department of Transportation presented a plan to reconstruct the Hover Street/State Highway 119 intersection with a single grade-separated movement, separated bikeway and transit queue-jump features. CDOT said the project is partially funded by a $25 million RAISE grant and is scheduled to begin construction in April 2026.
Alex Donaldson, Longmont senior civil engineer, introduced a final design presentation Dec. 16 from the Colorado Department of Transportation that proposes a grade-separated, single-movement intersection at Hover Street and State Highway 119 intended to reduce vehicle delay and pedestrian and bicycle conflict points.
"The goal of the Hover 119 project is to reconstruct the existing intersection to reduce traffic delays, decrease emissions, and improve safety for all users," Donaldson said during the council presentation, which included CDOT Region 4 engineer Keith Schaeffer.
Keith Schaeffer said the design was derived from a corridor study begun in 2011 and later advanced with funding from a federal RAISE grant awarded in 2023. Schaeffer told the council the package is part of a larger corridor program he described as "about a $172,000,000 programmatic project," and that the RAISE component provided roughly $25,000,000 toward construction.
"Our current design is going to maximize this over the next 20 years," Schaeffer said, outlining features that include a separated 12-foot bikeway (with shoulders) intended to improve safety and a bus priority "queue-jump" lane that would let buses access stops and re-enter traffic with signal priority. He said the design reduces vehicle-bike-pedestrian conflict points from 27 to 8 and that modeling projects meaningful crash reductions and operational improvements.
CDOT staff told the council the corridor work is expected to move into construction under a Construction Manager/General Contractor (CMGC) delivery method beginning in April 2026, with work extending into 2027. Schaeffer said the bikeway segment and an underpass connection are on different construction packages and that some portions remain to be completed in later construction phases.
Council members focused questions on speed and enforcement for the bikeway, eastbound traffic modeling, and construction impacts during Longmont events such as Sundance. Schaeffer said the bikeway is geometrically designed for segments that could accommodate bicycles traveling up to 35 mph in straightaways but that operational speeds will typically be lower; he also said enforcement or speed-camera pilots are coordinated with the Colorado State Patrol and county partners.
Longmont staff said they are coordinating communications and business access with CDOT and the prime contractor, noting a project website and a hotline for public questions and concerns. The council took no formal separate vote on the presentation; the intergovernmental agreement to contribute to RAISE-funded improvements at Hover and 119 was included and approved earlier on the consent agenda as Resolution 2025-81.
