CHEYENNE — David McCartney is a long-haul truck driver for Landstar System who moves propane tanks from Ferrellgas in Denver, up Interstate 25 to Cheyenne, then exits onto Interstate 80 heading west.
“We make a lot of runs out of Denver to Salt Lake City (via I-80) because it’s easier than going through the Rockies,” said McCartney of the 500-mile journey that he travels twice a week.
In time, the trucker may rethink his drive.
If the traffic at the I-80/I-25 interchange in south Cheyenne is bad now with narrow construction lanes and stop signs on on-ramps where truckers and commuters whiz through, wait until an estimated $500 million makeover of Wyoming’s most congested interstate intersection begins in a few years after the Wyoming Department of Transportation wraps up design work.
The latest estimate for the project is up to about $500 million from just over $300 million in 2020, and comes following design work that could take until 2027 to complete.
At the core of the new proposed interchange are thick concrete-supported columns for exit and ramp bridges — or “flyovers” as they are called in WYDOT-speak — connecting Interstates 25 and 80. They will be sweeping bridges that carve up more land.
“I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the inflation between 2020 and today,” said Christina Spindler, WYDOT’s highway development engineer in charge of the interchange project. “But our best estimate at this point in time is that the total project will be around $500 million.”
If things go smoothly with lining up state and federal money, with 80% or more coming from the feds, a best guess at completing a new interchange in Cheyenne could be sometime in the early to mid-2030s.
It will stand out as one of Wyoming’s largest construction projects of the last decade.
“This will be a major project for WYDOT,” Spindler said. “If and when it happens, this would be one of the largest for WYDOT.”
The Pain Hasn’t Begun Yet
The new gateway to Wyoming’s major freight thoroughfares won’t be built overnight, either — something anyone driving through the Fort Collins I-25 corridor anytime over the past decade can sympathize with.
Think at least six years of construction that will happen in phases as the entire interchange is nearly demolished and replaced with a small maze of Los Angeles-like flyover bridges for ramps and exits that permit trucks and cars to speed along without barely slowing down.
That’s not the case now.
The flyovers also will cover more land in their spans with a wider radius than the current cloverleaf-designed interchange.
Spindler labels the larger interchange as a “partial cloverleaf” that will ease traffic flow and reduce collisions at the busiest interchange in Wyoming.
Examples of flyovers are few in Wyoming, but there are two such designs already out there as examples. Both are much smaller in scale and were built in the 1960s.
One is in Buffalo in the coal-rich Powder River Basin area where I-25 merges with I-90. The other is the Dwyer Junction area in Wheatland along I-25.
Truckers Aren’t Convinced
Truckers remain skeptical of the potential timeline to rebuild the Cheyenne interchange.
“In the long run, it’ll make merging easier — after a decade of waiting — and make it safer than what we currently have,” said McCartney of the Cheyenne interchange makeover. “Too bad it’ll take that long.”
Other truckers feel the same.
“Why?” asked Chris Hartley, a driver for Southern Transport, who was hauling pipes Thursday for an oil and natural gas project. “It’s a huge waste of money. People just need to learn how to drive.”
Hartley also said the construction work could hurt business at the Flying J Travel Center south of Cheyenne because truckers may want to make a pit stop elsewhere for fuel that’s more convenient.
“I’ll fill up elsewhere,” he said.
Oleg Shyshkin, a driver for Som Delivery Express, hauls frozen food to West Coast ports headed for export markets.
“That’s a long time,” Shyshkin said of the road work at the interchange. “I’ll have to slow down, and that’ll waste my time if there is a lot of construction going on.”
Torn Up Roads
Evidence of construction work going on now along the I-80 at the interchange isn’t the start of this project, although it is somewhat related.
This is just a tidy ’em up road project.
Traffic traveling the two lanes for the west and eastbound sides of the interchange along the I-80 have been pushed into single, narrow lanes between orange-and-white-striped cones. The work is being performed between mile markers 358 and 368.
At the core of this work is the removal of old concrete pavement, which is getting replaced with asphalt to keep the road from crumbling. The work is a stopgap measure until the real work begins on the interchange.
The construction work along I-80 now was temporarily halted over the winter, then resumed March 29 when the weather calmed down.
Beth McGinn, a spokeswoman with the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, a Washington, D.C.-based group that profiles major road projects, said the new interchange is desperately needed.
Today’s 1960s-vintage cloverleaf interchange design is outdated for the amount of traffic it handles, she said.
The older cloverleafs were built when commuters and truckers didn’t move at high speeds, and diesel trucks hauling “dual” trailers weren’t an issue. Trucks also were much shorter than they are today.
According data collected by McGinn, the interchange has seen 160 collisions since 2018.
“Cloverleafs are not designed to handle the volumes of cars and the speeds of lots of truck traffic,” McGinn said.
The intechange of Interstates 25 and 80 in Cheyenne is undergoing construction, but another huge $500 million revamp is in the works. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
Truckers and commuters were seen running a stop sign located at the Cheyenne interchange when exiting from the northbound lane of Interstate 25 to the eastbound Interstate 80. Traffic has narrowed to a single lane along the I-80, with the stop sign placed at the merging exit from the I-25 to help with traffic flows and avoid potential crashes. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) 
David McCartney is a long-haul truck driver for Landstar System who moves propane tanks from Ferrellgas in Denver, over to Salt Lake City. He’s worried about lengthy traffic delays when construction begins on the replacement of the interchange. “In the long run, it’ll make merging easier – after a decade of waiting – and make it safer than what we currently have,” said McCartney of the Cheyenne interchange makeover. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) 
Truckers and commuters were seen running a stop sign located at the Cheyenne interchange when exiting from the northbound lane of Interstate 25 to the eastbound Interstate 80. Traffic has narrowed to a single lane along the I-80, with the stop sign placed at the merging exit from the I-25 to help with traffic flows and avoid potential crashes. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) 
Chris Hartley, a driver for Southern Transport who hauls pipes for an oil and natural gas project, said the interchange project is a “huge waste of money.” (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) 
Truckers and commuters were seen running a stop sign located at the Cheyenne interchange when exiting from the northbound lane of Interstate 25 to the eastbound Interstate 80. Traffic has narrowed to a single lane along the I-80, with the stop sign placed at the merging exit from the I-25 to help with traffic flows and avoid potential crashes. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) 
Oleg Shyshkin, a driver for Som Delivery Express, hauls frozen food to west coast ports headed for export markets. “That’s a long time,” Shyshkin said of the road work at the interchange that could take years to complete. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) 
A stop sign located at the Cheyenne interchange where commuters and truckers are supposed to stop when exiting from the northbound lane of Interstate 25 to the eastbound Interstate 80. Some commuters and truckers run the stop sign. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
Replacing Dinosaurs
In today’s world, many of these older interchanges are getting replaced because of the billions of dollars of funding provided by the 3-year-old Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“It’s a pattern I’ve seen in how states are using this money,” McGinn said.
The crashes along the Cheyenne cloverleaf are typical of the designs from 60 years ago. They have tight curves, and insufficient acceleration and deceleration lanes. Loads carried by truckers can sometimes shift navigating them.
In its 60-year lifespan, no major improvements have been made to Cheyenne’s gateway to the Red Desert in south and central Wyoming and mineral riches of Gillette to the north and Bighorn Mountains where Sheridan’s quaint town once drew rock star Prince and Queen Elizabeth II for pit stops.
Spindler said that the crashes by trucks at the interchange are “significant.”
The heavy-truck crashes at the Cheyenne interchange represent 17% of total crashes reported, with the national average hovering around 4% for all other interchanges.
Speed Kills
“Probably one of the biggest issues we have today is the speed that you need to take the cloverleaf at,” Spindler said. “Right now, the average vehicle should slow down to around 20 mph. If you don’t slow down to that speed, your chances of overturning are much higher.”
She explained that trucks tend to tip over because of their height and how they’re loaded.
The still far-from-complete design of the interchange with flyovers would eliminate the “speed differential that causes severe crashes,” she said.
In the future, said Spindler, the cloverleaf will be completely reconstructed.
“What you’ll see is a number of much wider, sweeping kind of ramps that will connect the interstates to each other,” she said. “It’ll be different than anything you’ see in Cheyenne today.”
The interchange needs a makeover because of its strategic importance as a main corridor to move freight across the United States, Spindler said.
“It is the primary interchange in Wyoming for interstate commerce from border to border and coast to coast,” she said. “It is imperative for us that the interchange is safe, open and can efficiently move traffic through there."
