Howard from Aurora writes, “What's driving you crazy? Where Picadilly meets Colfax Ave near the new Amazon building, they cut off a section of the road and make you drive off of Picadilly and out of your way through the Amazon complex then back to Picadilly. Why are they making us do this?”
That part of Aurora is going through a tremendous amount of growth. The realignment of Picadilly Road, you are seeing Howard, is part of those growing pains.
On the south side of Interstate 70, the small, rural two-lane Picadilly Road connected traffic due-north and south between Colfax and 6th Ave. Now, Picadilly sits right next to the new Amazon DEN8 office and fulfillment center. It is Amazon’s first 24 hour, 7-days a week site. That means the roadway needs to be upgraded to handle all of the deliveries and the 1,000 full-time employees who will be working there. Part of the roadway upgrades includes shifting a once straight Picadilly Road slightly to the west up to a new intersection that will be constructed at East Colfax Ave. Part of the new alignment is already open. That is the section that you wrote about Howard as it takes you next to the Amazon facility. The rest of the new alignment north of this new spur will be opened once the road is carved out, paved and the new intersection and traffic signal at Colfax has been installed.
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Another part of the puzzle is the project that will construct a new interchange at I-70 and the newly-aligned Picadilly Road. The City of Aurora told me the new interchange will be a diverging diamond style interchange which forces traffic traveling over the bridge to switch sides, driving on the left, not the right. Then drivers return to the traditional American standard of driving on the right side of the road on the north and south sides of the bridge.
Here is an example.
The new interchange means the current eastbound I-70 to westbound Colfax ramp and the westbound I-70 to westbound Colfax ramp will be eliminated. The current access from eastbound Colfax that leads directly onto eastbound I-70 will also be eliminated. That will force drivers to use the new Picadilly interchange to get to eastbound I-70. The frontage road between Picadilly to and from E-470 will remain in place.
There will also be a new north leg of Picadilly constructed that will connect the I-70 interchange to Picadilly at Smith Road. So the final look from above, between Smith Road and just south of the DEN8 Amazon facility, will take Picadilly to the west a bit — over I-70 on a new bridge, past the new Colfax interchange, next to Amazon and back to the east before returning to its original north/south configuration near 11th Ave. This new alignment of Picadilly Road should be open to traffic by late 2025.
You can find more information about these changes and about the interchange project on the city’s website.
Denver7 Traffic Expert Jayson Luber says he has been covering Denver-metro traffic since Ben-Hur was driving a chariot. (We believe the actual number is over 25 years.) He's obsessed with letting viewers know what's happening on their drive and the best way to avoid the problems that spring up. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or listen to his Driving You Crazy podcast on any podcast app including iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify and Podbean.
