In the heart of oil and gas country, 49 gets an upgrade
Wider Weld County Road 49 offers safer passage for oil trucks and cars, and paves the way for new development
KERSEY» A 20-mile highway in the heart of Colorado oil and gas country just got a major upgrade, transformed from a narrow road to a burly concrete thoroughfare that can better handle increasing traffic loads, most notably the large trucks that roll across Weld County’s energy fields every day.
The completion of Weld County Road 49’s expansion between Hudson and Kersey, which officials planned to mark with a gathering this weekend, comes after two years of work that turned those two sometimes-deadly lanes into five.
The road work is expected to accommodate traffic in a region of northern Colorado that state demographers say will see a doubling of its population over the next three decades — with Weld and Larimer counties gaining 660,530 people and growing to more than 1.2 million by 2050.
About one in 19 Coloradans live in Weld County. By 2050, according to projections, one in 12 will.
“When we planned for the road, we did so with a 7 percent annual increase in traffic (over 30 years) in mind,” said Elizabeth Relford, Weld County’s deputy director of public works.
If the recently released numbers from the state demographer’s office prove accurate, the capacity of the new and improved County Road 49 — known to many locals as the Kersey cutoff — will be put to the test in short order.
“We have already seen an uptick in (housing) activity in areas like Kersey, and we expect additional growth to develop along that corridor all the way to Hudson,” said Rich Werner, president and CEO of Upstate Colorado Economic Development.
Andy Montgomery, CEO of the Northern Colorado Economic Alliance, said spiking housing costs in metro Denver make a home in outlying areas along the Front Range a more attainable dream.
“Because it’s so expensive (in the metro area), this is where all the people are going to go,” Montgomery
said. “Opening up this transportation route will open the area up to more development.”
And not just housing development, but the oil and gas and agricultural sectors will benefit from the road improvements too. All along County Road 49 are signs of Weld County’s booming energy industry, with storage tanks, tank batteries and producing well pads juxtaposed against big-acre ranches and farm fields.
The road’s $109.6 million overhaul between Interstate 76 and U.S. 34 will help the energy industry move equipment and product more efficiently and more safely, Weld County Commissioner Mike Freeman said.
“It was a very busy road, with up to 50 percent of its traffic (being) truck traffic,” Freeman said. “It’s going to be a benefit to the traveling public as well as the oil and gas industry.”
Weld County Road 49 has been used for years by locals as an alternative north-south route to increasingly crowded U.S. 85, which connects Denver to Greeley. But the two-lane road had proved itself deadly over the years.
According to data compiled by the county, there were 242 accidents over a 10-year period on County Road 49 between 2001 and 2011. The county was unable to break down how many people were killed or injured during that span, though archived Denver Post stories reported several fatal collisions over the decade.
One of the worst occurred in 2008 between a liquid-petroleumgas tanker truck and a minivan, in which a family of six was killed.
The road averages about 3,000 vehicles a day at the southern end of County Road 49 and 6,400 vehicles a day near its intersection with U.S. 34, according to the county. Relford said that volume could triple over the next few years.
“Once more people figure out it’s a parallel arterial to U.S. 85, it’s going to increase,” she said of traffic counts.
Werner said Weld County’s proactive approach to adding road capacity farther east in the county was forward-thinking.
“One of the most important parts of this project is to alleviate the industrial congestion on other north-south routes like U.S. 85 and even I-25,” he said. “With the stalling of investment by the state in providing funding to our major corridors, the county has taken on the additional responsibility of providing safer and less-congested corridors.”
A recent drive on the newly widened highway was smooth, with wide shoulders on the sides and a continuous turn lane in the middle. There are no traffic lights in the 20 miles between I-76 and U.S. 34, and the speed limit is 65 mph.
The concrete surface of the road is expected to last 30 years, the county says.
Weld County Road 49’s role in carrying traffic will only increase in the coming years, as extensions at the north end of the highway continue. The Weld County Parkway, a new four-lane road that was completed a couple of years ago, brings County Road 49 another 3½ miles north — from U.S. 34 to Weld County Road 60 1/2.
The county will soon embark on a project to extend the road another 2½ miles north from there to State Highway 392 — an effort expected to cost $21 million. That northward push will give energy operators better access to the Niobrara shale play at the top end of the Denver-julesburg oil and gas basin, Freeman said.
But even with the promise of more drilling in the county — Weld County accounts for nearly half the state’s nearly 55,000 active wells — coupled with the projected increase in the county’s population over the next three decades, Freeman said it will be a long time before County Road 49 is overrun with cars and trucks.
“I think we’re good for a long time,” he said.
John Aguilar: 303-954-1695, jaguilar@denverpost.com or @abuvthefold