North Meadows
North Meadows Drive → Castle Rock Parkway
The northern relief route into I-25. It was built to take pressure off Meadows Parkway, but traffic forecasts now show the western segment approaching capacity.
District 3 traffic plan
Three gateways.
One goal.
District 3 residents on the west side of I-25 depend on a small number of east-west routes to get across town. My plan starts with the three gateways we actually use — and one simple measure of success: does the trip get faster?
The problem
District 3 funnels through three gateways.
When one of these corridors backs up, thousands of residents feel it. Rather than talking about “traffic” as one giant problem, we should treat each gateway as a corridor with specific bottlenecks, projects and measurable results.
Meadows Parkway
Meadows Parkway → I-25
The everyday choke point many Meadows residents know too well. Before committing to a massive widening project, we should squeeze more performance out of the corridor we already have.
Wolfensberger
Wolfensberger Road → I-25
A major western gateway with known bottlenecks and planned improvements. The question is whether the current timeline matches what residents are experiencing today.
The plan
Fix the corridors we depend on.
I am not promising to eliminate traffic. I am proposing a practical order of operations: use the Town's own traffic data, prioritize the bottlenecks already identified, coordinate aggressively with CDOT where it controls the system, and measure whether each investment actually saves residents time.
01
North Meadows
Make the relief route actually provide relief.
North Meadows Drive was created to give The Meadows another route toward I-25 and reduce pressure on Meadows Parkway. The Town's latest traffic forecast now identifies North Meadows Drive from Meadows Boulevard to US 85 as approaching capacity.
The Town has already identified widening this segment to four lanes, including bridge expansion, as a short-range transportation need. That makes this less about inventing a new project and more about making sure an already-identified District 3 priority keeps moving.
01
Protect the project from slipping.
Keep the North Meadows widening and bridge work visible in annual capital planning and ask what can move design, funding and construction forward sooner.
02
Phase what can be phased.
If the entire corridor cannot be delivered at once, identify whether individual bottlenecks, turn lanes, intersections or bridge work can provide meaningful relief earlier.
03
Measure the effect on Meadows Parkway.
North Meadows was intended to relieve the main Meadows corridor. We should quantify how much relief it provides before automatically moving to the next expensive widening.
02
Meadows Parkway
Get more performance out of what we already have.
This is the corridor residents talk about most: the trip from The Meadows across I-25 can take far longer than it should. The first response should not automatically be another massive construction project. It should be figuring out exactly where the delay is created and attacking those bottlenecks.
CDOT owns and operates the signals on Meadows Parkway between US 85 and I-25. Those signals already use different timing plans for morning, midday, afternoon and weekend traffic. Castle Rock should use that existing partnership to demand a corridor-level review based on actual District 3 travel times and queues.
01
Measure the entire trip.
Track peak travel time from The Meadows through the I-25 interchange instead of judging each traffic signal in isolation.
02
Make the signals work harder.
Work with CDOT on updated timing, queue management and an evaluation of adaptive signal technology that can respond to changing traffic rather than relying only on preset plans.
03
Fix the bottlenecks before widening everything.
Examine turn-pocket storage, signal phasing, lane assignments, ramp queues and commercial access points to find targeted improvements that can save time for less money.
03
Wolfensberger
Don't wait for a known bottleneck to get worse.
Wolfensberger is another critical western gateway to I-25. The Town already has widening and intersection work on the books, and its traffic analysis identifies the Wolfensberger/Prairie Hawk intersection as Level of Service E during the morning peak.
The larger widening project's design is currently paused at 30%, with plans to resume in 2029. That timetable deserves another look against current congestion, available revenue and the possibility of delivering smaller high-value improvements sooner.
01
Revisit the timeline.
Ask whether waiting until 2029 to resume design still makes sense given the Town's own congestion findings and District 3 growth.
02
Advance the worst bottlenecks first.
If full widening must wait, evaluate whether turn-lane, signal or intersection work at Prairie Hawk can be delivered earlier as a separate phase.
03
Keep right-of-way and design work moving.
Projects get more expensive when government waits until a corridor is in crisis. Preserve the work already completed and avoid unnecessary resets.
One number that matters
How long does it take to get across I-25?
Government usually measures whether a project was completed. I want us to measure whether it actually improved the trip.
Establish a baseline for each District 3 gateway during morning and evening peaks, publish it, and measure again after signal or roadway changes. If we spend money on congestion, residents should be able to see whether travel time went down.
Example performance dashboard
District 3 → I-25
North Meadows
AM / PM travel time
Meadows Parkway
AM / PM travel time
Wolfensberger
AM / PM travel time
Plan before the traffic arrives
Growth has to include the roads needed to support it.
New homes and businesses do not arrive without new trips on the road. Development decisions should account for what those trips do to the District 3 gateways residents already depend on.
That does not mean stopping growth. It means understanding the traffic impact before approval, identifying the improvements that will be needed, and making sure the cost is not quietly pushed onto existing residents after congestion becomes a crisis.
A realistic promise
No magic. No empty promise to “fix traffic.”
Some of these roads involve CDOT. Major roadway projects require engineering, funding, right-of-way and time. A Councilmember cannot wave a wand and make congestion disappear.
What Council can do is set priorities, ask hard questions about the capital schedule, insist on coordination with CDOT, push known bottlenecks forward and judge projects by the result residents actually experience.
The bottom line
Three gateways. Fewer bottlenecks. Less time sitting in traffic.
Built from the Town's own transportation planning
The projects and conditions described above come from Castle Rock's transportation planning, signal-operations information and current capital project pages.
You drive these roads
Where do you lose the most time?
If there is a specific light, turn lane or intersection that makes your commute worse, I want to hear about it. The people who drive these corridors every day usually know exactly where the problem is.
