CDOT puts $20 million Cortez intersection atop its unfunded list

A new signalized intersection where US 160 meets US 491 in Cortez is the top-ranked unfunded road project in Montezuma County on the Colorado Department of Transportation’s long-range plan, the department’s Region 5 planners told county commissioners at a workshop on Monday afternoon. They put it at about $20 million and said no money has been identified for it.

Graphic: Cortez Current. Source: CDOT Region 5 planners, at the county commissioners’ workshop of Nov. 2, 2026

The meeting was the annual county session CDOT calls a 4P meeting — for project priority programming process — which state law requires at least every two years and which the department holds yearly. It ran as a video call rather than in person. The regional planner for southwest Colorado told the board that the highway toward Durango was still closed that morning and that the department was working with a skeleton crew for the meeting because so many of its people were assigned to floods around the region.

The figures below are the ones CDOT staff gave the board out loud. The county published no agenda or packet for the workshop, so none of them can be checked against a written document, and they are reported here as what the department’s planners said.

The four prioritized projects nobody has paid for yet

CDOT’s planning and environmental manager for Region 5 took the board through the projects the department prioritized in the long-range plan it finished earlier this year, which looks out to 2050. Four are in Montezuma County, and all four are unfunded:

• The US 160 and US 491 intersection in Cortez, about $20 million. The scope he described is a new intersection with a traffic signal, moving the existing junction south, closing what he called Pinon Drive, and a five-lane road — two travel lanes each way plus a median.
• US 491 passing lanes north of the New Mexico line, which he put at $32 million to $33 million. Alternating northbound and southbound passing lanes, with turn lanes at intersections. He said its size puts it at the lower end of the prioritized list because it would be hard to fund, and that the department would look at grants.
• Sidewalks in Mancos on the Highway 160 business route, from Colorado 184 down to Main Street, about $3 million.
• Intersection improvements on Mike Wash Road in Towaoc, about $3 million. He said the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has been asking the department to look at the location, and that there had been a few accidents there and a lot of reported near misses.

On the transit side, the plan identifies bus service between Durango and Dove Creek as a need, with an operating cost he put at about $3.7 million.

Being on the long-range list matters even without money attached, he said, because it helps a project qualify for grant funding. The department deliberately does not cap how many projects go on the unprioritized part of that list for the same reason.

What is actually being built

The department’s 10-year program is where strategic projects get funded, from state legislation that put fees on uses of the transportation system. The projects he named in or near the county:

• $6 million for wildlife fencing and an underpass on US 160 between Cortez and Mancos, near the Mesa Verde interchange, which he said was identified as one of the worst 5 percent of locations in Region 5 for wildlife-vehicle collisions. The department is also applying to a federal Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grant for a second crossing structure closer to Cortez.
• About $3 million for the intersection at Phil’s World and County Road 30.1. He said the scope was only just being set and could be limited to turn lanes.
• About $12 million to pave Colorado 145 east of Dolores, from about mile marker 11.5 to mile marker 34. It is in design now, and he said the department hopes to pave it in two years.
• $2.5 million to pave the frontage roads the department still owns inside Mancos, which he said have not been paved in many years.
• About $400,000 for transit stop and shelter improvements in Cortez, Dolores and Rico and a Bustang Outrider stop, in design with no construction date.

Three phases of the Paths to Mesa Verde trail are moving, the region’s local agency engineer told the board. The Mancos-to-Mesa Verde phase is heading for advertisement by Central Federal Lands in July next year, for construction in 2028. The Mesa Verde-to-Phil’s World phase is shelved. The Phil’s-World-to-Cortez phase is being taken to 95 percent design by the end of the year, after which, the engineer said, the county can break the work into pieces as it sees fit and go out to advertisement as construction money becomes available. A Cortez Safe Routes to School project on West Seventh Street, put at just over $1 million, is in design for construction next year.

The department’s multimodal and transit liaison said its Safe Routes to School grant program is open for applications now.

Chain stations, culverts and signals

Under its asset programs, the department said it had completed culvert repairs and replacements on US 491 and Colorado 145 in November 2025 with a pot of federal money redistributed from other states, and replaced signals at Mildred and Harrison in Cortez at about $2.5 million. Culvert work is under construction now at two locations on US 160, one on Colorado 184 and two on Colorado 41.

Still to come: two chain stations, one on US 491 near Yellow Jacket and one on US 160 closer to Mancos, built with $6 million of freight funding and hoped for in 2027; a roughly $10 million surface treatment on US 491 from mile marker 0 to 6.4 and on US 160 from mile marker 18.3 to 35; and replacement signals at US 160 and Market and Linden streets in 2029.

The planner said Region 5 is the state’s smallest by population and lane miles and gets about 7.8 percent of the budget those figures drive.

The flood, and a tree on Colorado 184

The board opened with questions about the flooding. CDOT said it has been tracking the US 160 San Juan River Bridge south of Cortez through each storm, that an inspector was out there last week, that the bridge “survived the first event just fine” with no damage, and that it would be inspected again after this latest rain. Armoring on Aztec Creek, done a few years ago, stayed in place.

The capping and channel armoring on the San Juan River Bridge piers cannot be checked until the water drops, the department said, but it expects any permanent damage there to be “a fairly easy site to mitigate” without closing the road.

The board’s chairman said the county has damage to a structure near Road 39 and Road G and that the county would put together a list of its structures over 20 feet that need inspecting and send it to the department. CDOT asked for the list and said it would put those first.

He also asked the department to deal with a cottonwood tree standing in the right of way on Colorado 184 near the county gravel pit on Road S, saying the intersection sits close to a fast corner. CDOT said it would add it to the list for its traffic and safety crews to assess.

The department said the maintenance superintendent for the section that covers Montezuma County is retiring after 38 years, and that a replacement will have to be found.

The disaster declaration letter

After the planners left, the board turned to a letter of support for a major disaster declaration, which the chairman said had been sent so the county could represent the whole southwest Colorado region. He said the last 48 hours had done significant damage in several counties.

Commissioner Kent Lindsay said the letter had been forwarded to him and that it would “hopefully bring in more disaster relief into the area because we’re going to need it.” The recording does not clearly name the agency he said forwarded it. The third commissioner said the county should support it if it can.

No vote was taken. The chairman said the letter would go on next week’s agenda to be approved then.

The board then adjourned the workshop and said it would open a special meeting at 3 p.m. to review online interview materials for the public health director position, with an executive session for personnel matters. That meeting is not part of the recording the Current read, and the county has published nothing about it.

About this story

This account is written from the county’s own recording of the November 2 workshop on its YouTube channel, and from the agenda the county published in that video’s description. The transcript is automatic captioning: it garbles names and can drop digits, so no CDOT staff member is named here, the commissioners are identified only where the chairman named them or the county’s own roster settles who was speaking, and every dollar figure is attributed to the official who gave it rather than stated as fact. Percentages and mile markers are as spoken.

The county’s news releases and meeting videos are at montezumacounty.gov.