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CDOTNorth I-25 Express Lanes — Segment 5 (Mead–Berthoud)
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CDOT · Transportation

North I-25 Express Lanes — Segment 5 (Mead–Berthoud)

Final two-lane gap of I-25 between Denver and Fort Collins. Weld County. Timeline 2024–2028 (est.).

Updated Oct 13

Money in
Contracts awarded so far CALC
$214.52M

Formula: $30.49M + $97.04M + $86.99M = $214.52M.

CDOT funding estimate FACT
≈ $100M

Source: CDOT — North I-25 funding page (codot.gov), “identified approximately $100M in funding”.

Two different figures, shown together. Neither is a later version of the other, so no change is computed between them.

Result so far
Underway. What this stage means

Underway. The main work on this project started. Money goes out as the work goes on.

The stages, in order

  1. Requested An agency asked. No money yet.
  2. Funded Money approved. Work still to start.
  3. Underway Work started. Money goes out. This project
  4. Complete Work complete.

Halted Work stopped before the end.

This stage is our reading of the sources at the foot of this page, last read 24 September 2026.

Timeline 2024–2028 (est.)

Paid so far CALC
$158.79M, through September 2026

CDOT’s dashboards print a paid figure for all three of this project’s contracts. Our sum: $30.49M + $88.9M + $39.4M = $158.79M. CDOT prints no total. Who is being paid, contract by contract

CALC A Honesty Framework The label says how we know the figure. The grade rates the source record, not the project. The grade rates the source record, not the project.

Your take on this project

How well does this project use public money?
Your rating and comment help show which projects residents see as a good use of public money, and which as a poor one.

A rating here is not a vote, a scientific poll or a message to your representative.

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How we use this
Your rating is stored without your name, address or any identifier. We count it into a total, so the people who govern this place can see how residents read their spending. No rating and no total is published on this site. We may publish summaries of what residents tell us about a place. Those are our own writing, never your rating and never a count, average or distribution of anybody's. Ratings and comments are grouped into themes that show elected leaders how residents rate each project.

Latest public update

Under construction. CDOT's September 2026 dashboard for the segment prints three construction contracts at a current value of $30.49M, $97.04M and $86.99M, and $158.79M paid to the contractor across them; the contracts awarded figure shown here is our sum of the three contract values, and it leaves out the design contract (project 24309), whose value the dashboard does not print. Until 25 September 2026 this row showed ≈ $210M, from a contract listing with no recorded address. CDOT's funding page cites ≈ $100M of identified funding. The dashboard shows construction package 1 complete, with a fixed completion date of Dec 31, 2024, and fixed completion dates of Jun 30, 2027 and Jan 28, 2028 for packages 2 and 3.

Open questions for the state (3)
ANALYSIS
  • Will construction package 3 hold its Jan 28, 2028 completion date?
  • Construction package 1's dashboard says there have been no change orders to date, and its own chart shows a current contract value above its initial value. What accounts for the difference? The figures are in the section on figures that do not add up, below.
  • Package 3's dashboard prints $39.4M paid and $47.7M remaining on an $86.99M contract, which is $0.11M more than the contract. Which figure is current?

Total cost and spending
Contracts awarded so far$214.52M

Our sum of the current contract values CDOT’s monthly dashboards print: $30.49M + $97.04M + $86.99M = $214.52M. It is not the project’s total cost, and CDOT prints no project total. It is drawn from the official record(s) listed below.

CDOT funding estimate≈ $100M

From CDOT — North I-25 funding page (codot.gov). A different figure from the one above, shown beside it; no change is computed between them.

Paid to contractors: $158.79M of $214.52M in current contracts. CALC CDOT’s monthly dashboards print what has been paid to the contractor to date on all three of this project’s contracts. The two totals are our sums of those figures: $30.49M + $88.9M + $39.4M = $158.79M, and $30.49M + $97.04M + $86.99M = $214.52M. They are payments on those contracts, not the project’s whole spend: anything paid outside them is in neither figure, and nobody publishes that. CDOT’s latest published dashboard: September 2026.

Milestones (4)
  • CM/GC team selected — SEMA / Ralph L. Wadsworth
  • Construction package 1 complete — December 2024
  • Construction packages 2 and 3 — contract completion June 2027 and January 2028
  • Expected completion — mid-2028

Who is being paid (3)
FACT
Funding sourceFinanced by reinvesting toll revenue from Segments 6–8 into a loan.
Political giving
SEMA Construction / Ralph L. WadsworthCM/GC contract, construction package 1 (project 25986)$30.49M contractASEMA project page / CEGSearch TRACER
SEMA Construction / Ralph L. WadsworthCM/GC contract, construction package 2 (project 25987)$97.04M contractASEMA project page / CEGSearch TRACER
SEMA Construction / Ralph L. WadsworthCM/GC contract, construction package 3 (project 25988)$86.99M contractASEMA project page / CEGSearch TRACER
Where this comes from: award announcements and project records from CDOT, FHWA, agencies and the legislature’s nonpartisan staff — each Record link opens the source. Paid-to-date shows only published figures (green = verified); everything else stays PENDING, because the state does not publish payments project by project. Political giving links open TRACER, the Secretary of State’s official campaign-finance database, where contribution records are searchable by name — contributions are legal and public, and a search link implies no wrongdoing by anyone.

Pacing CALC

Is the money keeping pace with the calendar?

An even pace is our baseline, not CDOT's plan. A gap is a question to ask, not a verdict, and it compares money with time, not with the work done.

See the spending in detail

Money paid against contract time used, from CDOT's monthly dashboards for September 2026, the latest in the record.

  • Construction package 1 Paid 100.0% of the contract. More days have passed than the contract allows (387 of 237), so no gap is shown.
  • Construction package 2 Paid 91.6% of the contract with 70.0% of its time used: 21.6 percentage points ahead of an even pace, $20.99M more.
  • Construction package 3 Paid 45.3% of the contract with 40.2% of its time used: 5.1 percentage points ahead of an even pace, $4.40M more.

Figures in CDOT’s dashboards that do not add up

These are CDOT’s own figures, shown exactly as CDOT printed them, and we do not say which one is right.

  • Change orders: the words and the figures disagree CALC

    North I-25 Segment 5: Mead to Berthoud (CO 66 to CO 56) (project 25986), September 2026

    CDOT’s dashboard for this month says, in words, “There have been no change orders to date.” Its chart prints:

    • $28.73 Million
    • $1.76
    • $30.49 Million

    The change orders are printed with no unit, so they are not added to anything. The current value is $1.76M above the initial value, which the words “no change orders” do not account for.

    $30.49M − $28.73M = $1.76M

    CDOT’s dashboard, September 2026 (PDF) (opens in a new tab) · read 25 September 2026

None of these figures is used in a total, a chart or the pacing view on this site.

Sources and receipts (2)

Follow this project

North I-25 Express Lanes — Segment 5 (Mead–Berthoud)

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