I notice the population increase quite a bit when visiting Denver-area parks and open spaces. It used to be fairly rare that the parking lots were full--especially early in the morning. Now in a lot of places that are easily accessible to the Front Range, you have to be there before 7am on weekends to get a parking space. It was never like that even as recently as 5 years ago. CDOT is correct in one respect--traffic on I70 is only going to get worse. There's no way around it.