Transportation  May 15, 2015

Editorial: Map out a new route to road improvements

Clearly Coloradans need to redouble their efforts to create a meaningful funding plan for much-needed highway improvements. That lawmakers, the Colorado Department of Transportation and Gov. John Hickenlooper failed to agree on a promising transportation measure – Senate Bill 15-272 – means that the issue has been put off for at least another year.

The idea was to use a program the state adopted successfully back in 1999, when voters gave state transportation officials approval to issue bonds at a low rate of interest to build what became known as T-REX. This was the ambitious, five-year project that widened Interstate 25 south through Denver and provided new light rail stations as well. The bonds helped jumpstart the project and allowed it to be built faster, at a lower cost.

This time around, getting lawmakers and voters to buy off on another round of bonding was stopped dead because the bill, sponsored by Sen. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, among others, did not include enough money to pay the interest costs.

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Back in 1999, the state transportation department was able to use state revenues from other sources to cover the interest payments. CDOT no longer has access to those funds. As a result, CDOT officials and Hickenlooper objected strongly to the $1.6 billion in interest CDOT would have had to come up with.

Although Colorado’s improving economy is providing more cash for roads – CDOT will get about $100 million this next fiscal year – it’s not nearly enough to maintain, repair and improve our major highways in urban and rural areas.

None of this is good news for anyone who lives north of I-70 on the Front Range, where traffic on I-25 is projected to double in the next 20 years or so. For people who drive this route regularly, the bumper-to-bumper commute is a major headache.

Northern Colorado already is designated as one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, but that growth will come to a halt or be seriously hampered if the slog on the region’s major highway continues to worsen.

This summer, major confabs are planned at which our congressional representatives and state representatives will be called upon to come up with important new solutions.

It’s a shame more progress wasn’t made this year. But T-REX was incredibly successful, as were other projects that were done under the same funding pool, including the I-25-Harmony Road interchange in Fort Collins and others farther afield.

Moving forward, there’s no reason we as policy makers, business leaders and taxpayers can’t replicate that success.

But everyone must get back to work, solve the interest-payment shortfall, and tackle this issue again next session.

Clearly Coloradans need to redouble their efforts to create a meaningful funding plan for much-needed highway improvements. That lawmakers, the Colorado Department of Transportation and Gov. John Hickenlooper failed to agree on a promising transportation measure – Senate Bill 15-272 – means that the issue has been put off for at least another year.

The idea was to use a program the state adopted successfully back in 1999, when voters gave state transportation officials approval to issue bonds at a low rate of interest to build what became known as T-REX. This…

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