A series of road and interchange projects on Interstate 25 from Baptist Road to the southern edge of Denver that has bedeviled drivers this summer will be completed by the first of the year.

Just don’t plan on easing that car seat back into full-cruise mode, though. Another major project — widening I-25 from Academy Boulevard to Interquest Parkway — is in the wings.

That project, to be under way by summer 2010, will widen the interstate to three lanes in each direction on a very busy section of road. The extra lanes will be carved out of the center median, which generally keeps road crews out of exisiting lanes and minimizes traffic snarls.

Bob Wilson of the Colorado Department of Transportation said most of this summer’s projects have been driven by the need to either increase the number of interstate lanes or improve interchanges.

Wilson said crews have tried to do the most disruptive work at night to lessen the impact on traffic flow. Still, the projects inevitably have caused backups, delays and, sometimes, a mad scramble for alternative routes, which usually means a drive on dark, twisty Highway 83 to the east of the interstate.

Closest to home, the Baptist interchange project is on schedule to be completed by January, said Bob Torres,  senior project manager for Jacobs Engineering, which is overseeing the project for the Baptist Road Rural Transportation Authority.

The $13 million project, which begins east of the Old Denver Highway and continues to the Jackson Creek Parkway intersection, includes widening Baptist Road to four lanes, adding right and left turn lanes and building a new eight-lane bridge over I-25.

Building the bridge and timing the work so heavy stuff doesn’t fall on passing motorists below have led to frustrating traffic delays and overnight closures of the interstate, including tonight and Thursday from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. During the latest overnight closures, crews will place girders on piers on the southern side of the bridge. Motorists will be routed around the construction using on and off ramps.

To complicate traffic flow in that area, CDOT crews have been doing nighttime paving on both sides of the interstate from just south of the North Gate Boulevard Interchange, past the Baptist Road Interchange and north up to County Line Road atop Monument Hill. That project, begun last spring then suspended for winter, will be finished by the end of August, Wilson said.

After a peaceful — but short — drive north through the scenic Greenland valley, drivers hit another paving project, a four-mile stretch between Tomah Road and Douglas Lane, south of Castle Rock. That project also was begun last spring but suspended that summer because of a nationwide shortage of asphalt. Crews have been paving since July and expect to be done by the end of August.

Just a few miles north, motorists hit another major project, widening the interstate to three lanes in each direction between Castle Rock’s 5th Street and Douglas Lane and construction of an interchange at Plum Creek Parkway. That work is scheduled to be completed in December and will make the interstate three lanes through that burgeoning community.

Finally, to make the drive north just that much more exquisitely painful, CDOT is widening the interstate to four lanes from Founders/Meadows Parkway on the northern edge of Castle Rock to Lincoln Avenue at the southern end of the Denver metro area. That project includes construction of a frontage road that will open in the next few weeks and the closure of two antiquated interchanges. That work is supposed to be done by September.

Wilson said the last large interstate project to be done in this area is extending Powers Boulevard to I-25, a project that developers of northern Colorado Springs have been chomping the bit to have completed.

Wilson said that project will include a new interchange at North Gate Boulevard and widening the last section of two-lane interstate to three lanes past the Air Force Academy. Wilson said the project has been penciled in for 2012, but it’s a large, expensive project for which money has yet to be budgeted.

Construction on the Baptist Road exchange at I-25. Photo by CAROL LAWRENCE, THE GAZETTE