My family was driving this road south from Ouray to Durango one morning when I was about 20. We got stuck in a traffic jam. Eventually we made it to the place where a car had gone over the edge the night before, and they were trying to winch it up about 1000 feet. Papers and belongings were scattered down the mountainside. It was very sad and sobering. Driving back that night in light rain was terrifying.
I drive this road regularly in the winter for backcountry skiing and I truly think there are scarier roads. Sure there is a terrifying cliff but in general it's not bad if you simply drive to the conditions.
The ten miles or so on the Aspen side of Independent Pass, when leaving town, is so much worse. It feels like a true single lane road at points with a huge cliff on one side that has the road caving in.
The highways are never a problem. However "scary" the highways are in any given place the local roads are worse and people's driveways are worse still.
So of course nobody cares about two cars a year going off a cliff on the federal highway when ten cars a year go off a cliff on the road that's the local shortcut between the center of town and Walmart in the next valley or whatever.
> The highways are never a problem. However "scary" the highways are in any given place the local roads are worse and people's driveways are worse still.
I've driven sketchy roads all over the world and the stretch just after you break out of the aspen outskirts on Independent Pass is genuinely terrifying at parts. For a while there it was not uncommon, if two large vehicles were passing, to have a section of your right front wheel barely over the cliff as there was a part of the outer edge line missing because the road caved in.
>> to keep the highway and railway open during the winter, the Royal Canadian Artillery has since used 105-millimetre (4.1 in) howitzers to knock down unstable snow under controlled circumstances to reduce avalanche hazards. Stopping is prohibited in high-risk locations.
I really enjoyed reading about this. As a tourist, it's really easy to drive into Colorado and forget to check your route for huge altitude changes. I live in a flat place, I check roads for things like high speeds of traffic and flooding potential but it's easy to forget that sometimes I might end up driving on a cliffs edge.
Then there is also the puzzle of locals driving fast to get through the avalanche risk, while terrified tourists like myself are crawling along worried I'll go around an unknown turn too fast and shoot over the cliffs edge.
In summary I have to say it's been helpful for me to paste directions into AI tools and ask them to tell me how the drive would be during the days I'm planning to make it. Just for good measure I also ask to find local dog friendly stops along the way for food and rest room breaks.
I'm not sure if this is something work spending hundreds of millions of dollars fixing when the risks can be mitigated with some additional planning. They should probably board up that tempting cave mentioned at the bottom of the article though and improve their avalanche guns.
"The motorized tourist, reluctant to give up his back-assward view of the world, demands that the park administration pave the trails, clear out the brush, and put up guard rails... he wants luxury and convenience, and he gets it—at the cost of the wilderness."
Abbey was spot on when it comes to roads through parks, but this isn't really that - it begins in farmland and Ute reservation land, then climbs into the managed woodlands of the San Juan National Forest, mostly lined by towns and ski resorts. It also is the only connection between a number of towns. The wilderness area is off to the east.
There's a lot of dangerous infrastructure in America. This is far from the only road that causes accidents and deaths on the regular because it is in inherently unsafe or was designed for different kinds of traffic than it has now.
The fact that this road was built in the previous century makes it part of that second category.
In general, we seem unwilling to invest in American road infrastructure. I'd be willing to bet that potholes, the unexciting normal kind you don't even notice in a car, cause more loss of life and loss of money than any particular dramatic road.
US invests lavishly in road infrastructure by any measure. The idea that the US underinvests is contrarian to say the least. If it doesn't seem like the infra is any good that's in large part because of the huge Anglosphere infra cost multiplier and the fact that there is so much existing to maintain.
Problem is that the Federal Highway Association only spends for new projects, not routine maintenance (please check me on that though).
Therefore cities who need maintenance done will bundle routine maintenance they can't afford with expansion (lane expansion, streamlining). This lets them access federal dollars they wouldn't otherwise get.
Over decades, this has created a lot of infrastructure that isn't financially responsible as stuff has just gotten built and built and built. The ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) always grades the overall US as a "C" or worse for maintenance.
Part of the problem is that building things is sexy, maintaining them is harder and not sexy. Lotta money and focus on new stuff, maintenance is a secondary concern.
I would not say that is not completely true. Your state Department of transportation is probably the biggest spender anmong other state agencies. The healthcare Leviathan is only thing that could be bigger. I think it’s important to keep in mind that the surface transportation network in the United States is massive. We also have roads serving mere handfuls of predominantly agricultural users (still critical to food supply).
Building roads is expensive, and they don’t last forever. A good asphalt surface may be service worthy for 20 years. A ton of asphalt outside of California may cost in the ballpark of $150 to install. A 2 inch lift of asphalt will cover not quite 10 sqyd. So you can see how expensive this gets when we’re talking about thousands of miles.
I think it’s worth considering how policies may destroy much of the demand for roadways. Personally, I could imagine a future wear personal private transportation is basically unlawful or artificially expensive.
not all infrastructure should be maintained. I'd personally prefer rail infrastructure prioritized over car roads.
But maintaining current infrastructure in the meantime while we build better things is good too. Let's just not lose the plot on what needs to happen next.
Maintenance isn't the same discussion as decommissioning or replacement. If you want to talk about rail just say that's what you want to talk about without the setting up the awkward connection.
If they fix the potholes, imagine the damage to the mechanic economy for no longer needing to replace tires/wheels, fix suspensions, etc. The mechanic lobby is never going to let this happen!!
If you like cliffhanger roads, check out Adam Riemann's tour through Nepali/Indian Himalayas. I've ridden in Nepal, but not as wild a path as Adam takes here. He's a great vlogger and captures some great footage. If you have some time to spare, check it out.
This article really reminds of how the Golden Gate Bridge was one of the most suicide-prone bridges in the country, and the locals resisted making the barriers higher or add a protective net beneath. The reasoning was basically the same: it’s too expensive, it’s a matter of personal responsibility, know the risks yourself, etc.
Mountain driving can be scary if you are driving too fast or in bad weather. We have the Angeles Crest and Angeles Forest highway here in SoCal which is windy and has steep cliffs. Every weekend people come out with their motorcycles and sports cars and try to turn it into a race course. I remember years back a carpool van with people commuting to Cal Tech from Palmdale went over the side killing the passengers. It was during the winter and it was foggy and may have been icy too.
Why is the Cross Bronx Expressway scary? I read the Wikipedia page and understood how it tore through the neighborhoods and caused many social ills, but I didn’t understand why the road is scary. I have driven on this road once or twice, but I couldn’t recall anything remarkable from that drive.
Probably because it doesn't need to be fixed. Not every complaint requires government intervention, which we've often see is more expensive and problematic then anything it actually solves.
I remember driving several scary roads out in Colorado. The 210 out to Snowbird in a blizzard and a few others legit made my palms sweaty and I wasn't even driving. As a great plains Midwestern kid, seeing my buddy (who was well familiar with the roads) drive as well as he did in those conditions at least helped a little.
It just reinforced I didn't have the constitution live out in CO and drive those roads in those conditions.
Driving the Trans-Canada through BC was absolutely terrifying in the 80's; today it's a completely different experience. Twinning it took 25 years (1979 to 2014).
There's an overpass from one side of a big-box zone to the other in my area (Brunswick road over highway 20, which is a freeway at that point). One side there's a sidewalk and on the other side there isn't. It is a classic example of what Strongtowns calls a "Stroad" and many people walk across (always the poor) on the side without sidewalks exposed to uncontrolled car entering and leaving the freeway and not expecting pedestrians. I don't know any statistics but friends of mine have been injured on it.
It would be nice to fix all the things about roads. But the road in the article sounds like should be closed and the funds used to maintain it diverted elsewhere, perhaps to fix stroads.
I used to live in Colorado. This road is awesome, utterly beautiful. It’s also not even remotely uncommon, in the sense that the central high Rocky Mountains are crisscrossed by roads like this.
In other news the ski resorts have cliffs and you can ski right off them. Also the snow is deep and it gets suddenly cold at night and that will kill you too.
Maybe they can just have a pull off where you sign a waiver if you can't answer a couple of verbal questions like "what is leftover salmon" or "which mountains are named after titties" or "what animal has two oysters" or whatever.
This is a semi-local road to me, what is amazing in the article is the difference between Switzerland and the US in how they actually care about their citizens.
America is great and fun but also brutal in how the government will actively go out of its way to deny basic living standards. From healthcare to minimum wage, they want you to die just before you reach social security age.
Switzerland has ~440 people per paved road kilometer. The US has about ~80 people per paved road kilometer. That means Switzerland has more than 5x the number of tax payers to support each kilometer of paved road. Maybe Switzerland was smarter than the US in terms of not building infrastructure it can't adequately support, but in any event....
Why did you stop your comparison at number of people, instead of comparing the more obvious numbers like GDP vs population size? Number of people actually has no bearing on the ability to actually get things fixed.
I didn't want to guild the lily. Switzerland also has a significantly higher per capita GDP than the US. 1/4-1/3 higher.
Switzerland is just a really bad example to use because they're significantly wealthier than the US. The only other two non-city-states with a higher per capita GDP than the US are Ireland and Norway, but Ireland's is inflated because it's a tax haven (less real money available for public spending), and Norway's is inflated because of their oil and gas fields. Though, comparing the US to most any other country, especially individual European countries, is already specious. Switzerland is ~9 million, compared to ~340 million for the US. Scale matters, because of variance, selection bias, and the policy conclusions you can reasonably draw. A better apples-to-apples comparison would be between individual US states to individual European countries, or to compare the US to the EU as a whole[1]. People don't like to do that because such comparisons tend not come out the way they want. It would be interesting to read a follow-up comparing Colorado to Switzerland, not least because they're both mountainous regions. Not nearly as easy an analysis, though, because you'd have to figure out Colorado's share of Federal road infrastructure expenditures, plus Colorado-specific road data.
[1] To be fair, comparing the US to the EU can be a chore because many publicly available datasets, even from EU agencies, encompass not just the EU proper but larger geographic regions, or subregions of the EU. And of course Switzerland itself is just such an example as they're not a full member state. Like, try finding out the number of heat-related deaths. I couldn't find any numbers just for the EU proper. Some numbers included Russia, the Balkans, and/or Turkey, some were for subregions of the EU, and often it was a chore just to figure out which countries or regions were used in the report. It's a mess.
My family was driving this road south from Ouray to Durango one morning when I was about 20. We got stuck in a traffic jam. Eventually we made it to the place where a car had gone over the edge the night before, and they were trying to winch it up about 1000 feet. Papers and belongings were scattered down the mountainside. It was very sad and sobering. Driving back that night in light rain was terrifying.
I drive this road regularly in the winter for backcountry skiing and I truly think there are scarier roads. Sure there is a terrifying cliff but in general it's not bad if you simply drive to the conditions.
The ten miles or so on the Aspen side of Independent Pass, when leaving town, is so much worse. It feels like a true single lane road at points with a huge cliff on one side that has the road caving in.
Having parked on the side of it to go climbing on the other side of the river, I agree.
TBH, I find driving on I70 in full conditions to be much scarier because of the other traffic and the speeds.
The highways are never a problem. However "scary" the highways are in any given place the local roads are worse and people's driveways are worse still.
So of course nobody cares about two cars a year going off a cliff on the federal highway when ten cars a year go off a cliff on the road that's the local shortcut between the center of town and Walmart in the next valley or whatever.
> The highways are never a problem. However "scary" the highways are in any given place the local roads are worse and people's driveways are worse still.
I've driven sketchy roads all over the world and the stretch just after you break out of the aspen outskirts on Independent Pass is genuinely terrifying at parts. For a while there it was not uncommon, if two large vehicles were passing, to have a section of your right front wheel barely over the cliff as there was a part of the outer edge line missing because the road caved in.
Not as scary as this: https://dot.alaska.gov/highways/dalton/
The dalton is a low risk road spread along a great distance. For real terror, a few dangerous miles of road require an Army to navigate safely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Pass_(British_Columbia)
>> to keep the highway and railway open during the winter, the Royal Canadian Artillery has since used 105-millimetre (4.1 in) howitzers to knock down unstable snow under controlled circumstances to reduce avalanche hazards. Stopping is prohibited in high-risk locations.
Low risk? Not if you travel on Winter on non-winterized vehicle / tires and without extra food, water and fuel for heating. The nature is cruel.
I really enjoyed reading about this. As a tourist, it's really easy to drive into Colorado and forget to check your route for huge altitude changes. I live in a flat place, I check roads for things like high speeds of traffic and flooding potential but it's easy to forget that sometimes I might end up driving on a cliffs edge.
Then there is also the puzzle of locals driving fast to get through the avalanche risk, while terrified tourists like myself are crawling along worried I'll go around an unknown turn too fast and shoot over the cliffs edge.
In summary I have to say it's been helpful for me to paste directions into AI tools and ask them to tell me how the drive would be during the days I'm planning to make it. Just for good measure I also ask to find local dog friendly stops along the way for food and rest room breaks.
I'm not sure if this is something work spending hundreds of millions of dollars fixing when the risks can be mitigated with some additional planning. They should probably board up that tempting cave mentioned at the bottom of the article though and improve their avalanche guns.
"The motorized tourist, reluctant to give up his back-assward view of the world, demands that the park administration pave the trails, clear out the brush, and put up guard rails... he wants luxury and convenience, and he gets it—at the cost of the wilderness."
--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
If that strikes a chord with you, please take a moment to consider the following message:
https://morethanjustparks.com/roadless-rule/
Abbey was spot on when it comes to roads through parks, but this isn't really that - it begins in farmland and Ute reservation land, then climbs into the managed woodlands of the San Juan National Forest, mostly lined by towns and ski resorts. It also is the only connection between a number of towns. The wilderness area is off to the east.
There's a lot of dangerous infrastructure in America. This is far from the only road that causes accidents and deaths on the regular because it is in inherently unsafe or was designed for different kinds of traffic than it has now.
The fact that this road was built in the previous century makes it part of that second category.
In general, we seem unwilling to invest in American road infrastructure. I'd be willing to bet that potholes, the unexciting normal kind you don't even notice in a car, cause more loss of life and loss of money than any particular dramatic road.
US invests lavishly in road infrastructure by any measure. The idea that the US underinvests is contrarian to say the least. If it doesn't seem like the infra is any good that's in large part because of the huge Anglosphere infra cost multiplier and the fact that there is so much existing to maintain.
Anglosphere cost multiplier is an interesting way to put it.
Problem is that the Federal Highway Association only spends for new projects, not routine maintenance (please check me on that though).
Therefore cities who need maintenance done will bundle routine maintenance they can't afford with expansion (lane expansion, streamlining). This lets them access federal dollars they wouldn't otherwise get.
Over decades, this has created a lot of infrastructure that isn't financially responsible as stuff has just gotten built and built and built. The ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) always grades the overall US as a "C" or worse for maintenance.
Part of the problem is that building things is sexy, maintaining them is harder and not sexy. Lotta money and focus on new stuff, maintenance is a secondary concern.
I would not say that is not completely true. Your state Department of transportation is probably the biggest spender anmong other state agencies. The healthcare Leviathan is only thing that could be bigger. I think it’s important to keep in mind that the surface transportation network in the United States is massive. We also have roads serving mere handfuls of predominantly agricultural users (still critical to food supply).
Building roads is expensive, and they don’t last forever. A good asphalt surface may be service worthy for 20 years. A ton of asphalt outside of California may cost in the ballpark of $150 to install. A 2 inch lift of asphalt will cover not quite 10 sqyd. So you can see how expensive this gets when we’re talking about thousands of miles.
I think it’s worth considering how policies may destroy much of the demand for roadways. Personally, I could imagine a future wear personal private transportation is basically unlawful or artificially expensive.
not all infrastructure should be maintained. I'd personally prefer rail infrastructure prioritized over car roads.
But maintaining current infrastructure in the meantime while we build better things is good too. Let's just not lose the plot on what needs to happen next.
Maintenance isn't the same discussion as decommissioning or replacement. If you want to talk about rail just say that's what you want to talk about without the setting up the awkward connection.
If they fix the potholes, imagine the damage to the mechanic economy for no longer needing to replace tires/wheels, fix suspensions, etc. The mechanic lobby is never going to let this happen!!
They do fix potholes. However new ones happen all the time so there are always plenty to find with a little working.
At least where I live potholes are the natural result of freeze-thaws cycles.
If you like cliffhanger roads, check out Adam Riemann's tour through Nepali/Indian Himalayas. I've ridden in Nepal, but not as wild a path as Adam takes here. He's a great vlogger and captures some great footage. If you have some time to spare, check it out.
https://youtu.be/c1D3RHmw7GA
I've got a Transalp over in the states now, so i'm looking forward to touring roads like the one mentioned in the article. Glad this popped up.
Scary doesn't mean deadly, this road isn't anywhere near the top of the list for most deadly roads.
This article really reminds of how the Golden Gate Bridge was one of the most suicide-prone bridges in the country, and the locals resisted making the barriers higher or add a protective net beneath. The reasoning was basically the same: it’s too expensive, it’s a matter of personal responsibility, know the risks yourself, etc.
Mountain driving can be scary if you are driving too fast or in bad weather. We have the Angeles Crest and Angeles Forest highway here in SoCal which is windy and has steep cliffs. Every weekend people come out with their motorcycles and sports cars and try to turn it into a race course. I remember years back a carpool van with people commuting to Cal Tech from Palmdale went over the side killing the passengers. It was during the winter and it was foggy and may have been icy too.
From the Drone angle it looks scary. But from auto drivers pov, it may not look that scary.
If it's anything like Independence Pass or Trail Ridge Road, it's definitely scary while driving too.
It's nothing compared to the Aspen side of Independence Pass. That stretch is terrifying.
Only tangentially related, but I kind of miss bus plunge newspaper filler.
Before clicking, I thought this would be about the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Why is the Cross Bronx Expressway scary? I read the Wikipedia page and understood how it tore through the neighborhoods and caused many social ills, but I didn’t understand why the road is scary. I have driven on this road once or twice, but I couldn’t recall anything remarkable from that drive.
Did that every year visiting family all through the 70s and early 80s from age 5 through 15. Left an indelible mark.
Probably because it doesn't need to be fixed. Not every complaint requires government intervention, which we've often see is more expensive and problematic then anything it actually solves.
Pro tip: Take a different route, or drive 15mph.
tAkE a DiFfErReNt RoUtE https://maps.app.goo.gl/uCsiUoZHs28pwb4Z8
Just slow down then....
You did read where going too slow causes additional risk related to avalanches and rock slides, did you not?
It's a very sticky problem that doesn't lend itself to "Why don't you just...." solutions.
and yet, I still haven't found the need to make it part of my daily commute. Fascinating.
Most people in the World don't. Most people also know when not to make flippant comments on subjects they don't have much knowledge about.
But do continue your charade, I also believe in free speech.
You'll be alright :)
Maybe this is a sign you spend too much shit posting on this site. It's your life and all, but;
Everyone is already driving 15mph on it because for so many people it's a tourist attraction.
Sorry, you're saying that people should just let the free market decide the issue of a gov't provided road? How does that make sense?
[dead]
Leave colorado alone
Don't worry, nobody but Colorado is ever going to try to, or even think to, fix this one.
Driving through the rockies is _terrifying_. It's not just this one road.
I remember driving several scary roads out in Colorado. The 210 out to Snowbird in a blizzard and a few others legit made my palms sweaty and I wasn't even driving. As a great plains Midwestern kid, seeing my buddy (who was well familiar with the roads) drive as well as he did in those conditions at least helped a little.
It just reinforced I didn't have the constitution live out in CO and drive those roads in those conditions.
oh come on the road to snowbird is chill
Driving the Trans-Canada through BC was absolutely terrifying in the 80's; today it's a completely different experience. Twinning it took 25 years (1979 to 2014).
It's also a bit dizzying. Really easy to just get lost in the spectacle of the mountains.
There's an overpass from one side of a big-box zone to the other in my area (Brunswick road over highway 20, which is a freeway at that point). One side there's a sidewalk and on the other side there isn't. It is a classic example of what Strongtowns calls a "Stroad" and many people walk across (always the poor) on the side without sidewalks exposed to uncontrolled car entering and leaving the freeway and not expecting pedestrians. I don't know any statistics but friends of mine have been injured on it.
It would be nice to fix all the things about roads. But the road in the article sounds like should be closed and the funds used to maintain it diverted elsewhere, perhaps to fix stroads.
>and his wife refused to travel on it
Smart person, I would never travel on that road even if the long way is 8 hours longer. And driving in winter ? You have to be crazy.
I used to live in Colorado. This road is awesome, utterly beautiful. It’s also not even remotely uncommon, in the sense that the central high Rocky Mountains are crisscrossed by roads like this.
In other news the ski resorts have cliffs and you can ski right off them. Also the snow is deep and it gets suddenly cold at night and that will kill you too.
Maybe they can just have a pull off where you sign a waiver if you can't answer a couple of verbal questions like "what is leftover salmon" or "which mountains are named after titties" or "what animal has two oysters" or whatever.
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[flagged]
What an unhelpful comment.
Enjoy crumbling infrastructure.
Do this one weird trick to summarize the entire article. Trim the headline:
"Fix One of America's Scariest Roads?"
This is a semi-local road to me, what is amazing in the article is the difference between Switzerland and the US in how they actually care about their citizens.
America is great and fun but also brutal in how the government will actively go out of its way to deny basic living standards. From healthcare to minimum wage, they want you to die just before you reach social security age.
Switzerland has ~440 people per paved road kilometer. The US has about ~80 people per paved road kilometer. That means Switzerland has more than 5x the number of tax payers to support each kilometer of paved road. Maybe Switzerland was smarter than the US in terms of not building infrastructure it can't adequately support, but in any event....
Why did you stop your comparison at number of people, instead of comparing the more obvious numbers like GDP vs population size? Number of people actually has no bearing on the ability to actually get things fixed.
I didn't want to guild the lily. Switzerland also has a significantly higher per capita GDP than the US. 1/4-1/3 higher.
Switzerland is just a really bad example to use because they're significantly wealthier than the US. The only other two non-city-states with a higher per capita GDP than the US are Ireland and Norway, but Ireland's is inflated because it's a tax haven (less real money available for public spending), and Norway's is inflated because of their oil and gas fields. Though, comparing the US to most any other country, especially individual European countries, is already specious. Switzerland is ~9 million, compared to ~340 million for the US. Scale matters, because of variance, selection bias, and the policy conclusions you can reasonably draw. A better apples-to-apples comparison would be between individual US states to individual European countries, or to compare the US to the EU as a whole[1]. People don't like to do that because such comparisons tend not come out the way they want. It would be interesting to read a follow-up comparing Colorado to Switzerland, not least because they're both mountainous regions. Not nearly as easy an analysis, though, because you'd have to figure out Colorado's share of Federal road infrastructure expenditures, plus Colorado-specific road data.
[1] To be fair, comparing the US to the EU can be a chore because many publicly available datasets, even from EU agencies, encompass not just the EU proper but larger geographic regions, or subregions of the EU. And of course Switzerland itself is just such an example as they're not a full member state. Like, try finding out the number of heat-related deaths. I couldn't find any numbers just for the EU proper. Some numbers included Russia, the Balkans, and/or Turkey, some were for subregions of the EU, and often it was a chore just to figure out which countries or regions were used in the report. It's a mess.