Parkway authority awaits DRCOG ruling

BROOMFIELD – As contractors continue work for the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority to complete the studies required to build the proposed road, the authority itself continues talks with the required state and federal agencies.
The authority expects to submit an application in February to the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) for inclusion on its Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).
Part of a larger beltway that would one day encircle the metro area, the proposed Northwest Parkway is planned to be a 10-mile toll road from the 96th Street Interchange with U.S. 36 to Interstate 25. If approved, it would be privately financed for about $225 million to $250 million and could link with E-470 at I-25 as early as 2003.
The authority will apply in February to DRCOG for air-quality conformity.
According to Steve Hogan, executive director of the parkway authority, every government in the metropolitan area planning on building a new street or highway that does not yet appear on the RTP and TIP must submit to such air-quality modeling. What results is a determination of air-quality conformity for the region, not for specific projects.
“So if the region conforms, we conform,” Hogan said.
Even though the Northwest Parkway is a privatized project, it would be just as if Boulder County submitted its county road improvement plans to DRCOG, Hogan noted of the process.
“Everybody is in the same basket, every project,” he said.
The modeling itself is totally in the hands of DRCOG officials – the authority cannot predict what will come of its application.
“There’s really not much we can do with it,” Hogan said. “It’s their model. They do the actual work with the model. There’s no work that we do. There’s nothing to indicate there would be a problem. The region is in conformity now.”
The newly approved work on south I-25 is all in DRCOG’s plan, so “there’s an assumption that additional work would be all right as well,” he added.
The authority will be dealing with national standards that are placed on the Denver metro area.
“It’s our responsibility to meet those,” he said. “When I say ‘our,’ I mean every governmental entity in the region, not just the parkway authority.”
Hogan said that criticism of the parkway project had been quiet lately.
“Maybe that’s the holiday season or that the critics actually discovered that we are doing what’s required,” he said.
Kelly Wark, transportation program director for Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) Citizen Lobby, said the group was continuing to put in comments to various agencies and request a full analysis of the beltway. Comments were expected to be due to the agencies, primarily the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), in early January. In early December the FHA gave critics an additional month to comment on the proposed E-470 route.
The Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority board, made up of elected officials from Broomfield, Lafayette, Erie and Weld County, has OK’d the location and general design for the interchanges at I-25 and U.S. 287. The Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over wetlands and bodies of water, has given the E-470 authority permits to cross three wetlands to connect to I-25.
The Northwest Parkway authority plans to put together its financing plan by July – if all goes according to schedule – and hold a bond sale by October.
In other parkway news, the Paradise Lane landowners who have taken Boulder County, Broomfield, Lafayette and Louisville to court over their 30-year Intergovernmental Agreement to preserve open space were expecting a ruling on the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case, according to Richard Westfall, who is representing the landowners.
“That will give clear indication that we have a viable claim and we can go forward and litigate it,” Westfall said.
He said a trial date was set for mid-September.

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