Just over $40.5 million in federal funds has now been secured for a long-anticipated project that will see the widening of U.S. Route 50, which runs across the lower midsection of Colorado.
What is called the US 50 Shift Project will center on creating twelve individual passing lanes on a nearly entirely rural 150-mile stretch of highway between the Kansas border and city of Pueblo.
Built in 1926 as part of the original US highway system, Route 50 slices through a dozen states nationally, from Virginia to California, and has been subject to upgrade work that is currently seeing the building of new lanes in and around Sacramento.
Work on the Kansas state line to the Pueblo section of Route 50, otherwise known as the High Plains Freight Corridor, is expected to cost around $67.5 million to complete, improving a segment that has been designated by the federal Transportation Department as a “key freight corridor.”
The new passing lanes will be added to what is primarily a two-lane highway, with several segments widened to four lanes.
In a statement upon the awarding of the federal funding, Rob Oquist, Otero County Commission Chairman, said that adding the twelve passing lanes will make Route 50 “safer and help boost the economy in our area.”
Route 50 takes up some 468 miles in Colorado, the longest stretch of any of the states it traverses.
February 28, 2025
By Garry Boulard
