Circle Drive highlight of 2026 street paving in Colorado Springs
Scott Harrison
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — Officials this week revealed that a whopping 95% of streets to be repaved during the next ten years are in residential neighborhoods, but the remaining 5% will include a busy street through the heart of the city that regularly draws complaints from drivers.
The highlight of next year’s paving list is Circle Drive, which connects to Fillmore Street on the north end and to Interstate 25 on the south end.
The project, which is part of the annual 2C expanded paving program funded by a voter-approved sales tax increase, will place fresh asphalt on a pair of three-mile stretches of Circle — between Fillmore and Platte Avenue, and between Airport Road and I-25.
You may wonder why the mile of Circle between those areas isn’t part of the project; the reason is because that segment is in good condition.
Drivers have regularly complained about poor conditions on affected parts of Circle — especially between Platte and Palmer Park Boulevard, and from Airport to both sides of the bridge construction on the south end of Circle.
In fact, South Circle has deteriorated so badly that in the spring of 2024, crews performed emergency paving between Fountain Boulevard and Monterey Road.
The upcoming South Circle paving coincides with the scheduled completion of the bridge project by the end of this year.
“With the proper preventative maintenance and the proper intervals, this road, we won’t have to come back and repave this road, hopefully for 25-plus years,” said Corey Farkas, public works operations and maintenance manager. “We’re going to have to continue to maintain it. We’ll inspect it.”
Other major streets on next year’s paving list are: Palmer Park, between Circle and Academy Boulevard; and the east segment of Cheyenne Road, between Nevada and Lake avenues.
To see the city’s interactive map of paving plans through 2027, visit: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/db395f7befa741aeb58346bfc5f390e6.
Some of those plans are considered tentative and subject to change.