Every Friday from November to March, the stretch from Denver to the slopes turns into a six-hour parking lot. Should Colorado cap ski resort capacity, expand the train to the mountains, or is sitting in traffic just the price you pay for living near world-class skiing?
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Add your commentI sat in traffic for 4 hours just to get to Eisenhower Tunnel last January. FOUR HOURS. I left at 5am thinking I'd beat the crowds. There were already brake lights at C-470. At some point this stops being an inconvenience and starts being a genuine public safety issue — people running out of gas, accidents on icy roads with zero shoulder space to pull over. Yes, it is absolutely unacceptable in 2025.
Expand the train. Full stop. The Ski Train used to run from Union Station all the way to Winter Park and it was GLORIOUS. Bring it back, extend it to Breckenridge, problem solved. I don't want to hear about cost — Colorado collected over a billion dollars in resort tax revenue last year. Find the money.
My grandmother used to tell stories about skiing Loveland in the 60s when it was just locals and the highway was basically empty. I know we can't go back to that but man. There's something genuinely sad about watching a thing you love get crushed under its own popularity. I still go, I still love it, but it doesn't feel like ours anymore. It feels like a product.
Capping resort capacity is honestly the dumbest idea I've heard floated in a while. You know who gets hurt by that? Not rich people with Ikon passes and vacation homes in Frisco. They book months out, they're fine. It's regular working families from Aurora or Pueblo who decide on a whim to take the kids skiing for the first time who get shut out. Think before you regulate.
lol yes it's unacceptable. also the sky is blue. also water is wet. we've been complaining about this for 20 years and the state has done essentially nothing meaningful. a dynamic message sign telling me there's a 3 hour delay is not a solution cdot
Okay I have to correct something I keep seeing in these discussions — the old Rio Grande Ski Train did NOT run to Breckenridge, it ran to Winter Park through the Moffat Tunnel. Breckenridge is on a completely different rail corridor and would require entirely new infrastructure through incredibly difficult terrain. I'm not saying don't build it, I'm saying let's be honest about what that actually costs and takes. We're talking decades and billions, not a quick fix.
born and raised in Lakewood, skied A-Basin since I was like 6 years old. my dad used to drive us up on saturday mornings and we'd be on the mountain by 9. now I tell my kids to just sleep in the car because we won't arrive til noon anyway. something has genuinely broken and nobody in the state legislature seems to care enough to actually fix it
Can someone explain to me why CDOT doesn't just implement timed entry permits for the I-70 corridor on ski weekends the way national parks do for trailheads? You reserve a window, you drive in that window, traffic gets distributed across more hours. It wouldn't cost that much to pilot and it might actually work. I genuinely want to know if there's a legal or political reason this hasn't happened because it seems obvious.
I moved here from Atlanta two years ago specifically because I wanted to ski on weekends. First winter I thought the traffic was just bad luck. Second winter I realized it's just... the reality. My question for people who've lived here longer than me: has it always been this bad or did something specific change? Like did CDOT stop expanding the road at some point or did resort popularity just spike?
unpopular opinion but traffic on I-70 is kind of a you problem? nobody is forcing anyone to go to Vail on a Saturday in February. go on a Tuesday. take a weekday. I work remotely, I hit the slopes on Wednesdays and the drive is literally 90 minutes. the mountain is half empty too. y'all just refuse to adjust your schedules and then complain online
Hard disagree with everyone saying the train fixes this. I live in Centennial. Getting my family of five — two kids under 8, ski gear, boots, helmets, snacks, the whole circus — onto a train in Denver and then navigating a resort shuttle at the other end is not realistic. The car is the car. What we actually need is a dedicated express lane on I-70 with dynamic tolling that aggressively prices out non-essential Saturday morning trips. Use that money to fund the road improvements. Price signals work.
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