Fix north I-25 or hurt quality of life, economy

Interstate 25 between Fort Collins and Longmont is a big and growing problem.

With each passing year, we effectively move farther from Denver and Denver International Airport. Unless the interstate is widened, within a decade or so it will routinely take three hours to travel a mere 65 miles to the airport and our capital city from Fort Collins. That would be a monumental failure of leadership by state politicians, the Colorado Department of Transportation and Colorado’s congressional delegation.

The factors contributing to this situation include population growth, inadequate transportation funding and, until recently, the lack of an organized lobbying effort for I-25.

We live in the fastest-growing part of Colorado. By 2040 the population of Larimer County will grow by 52 percent and Weld County’s population will increase by 111 percent. Today, 601,792 souls live in the two-county area. Over the next two decades or so, the population will increase to more than 1 million.

The problem becomes immediately obvious, doesn’t it? The state has not kept up with improvements to I-25 so we already have capacity problems. Add more people and you create a slow-moving parking lot.

If the problem is so obvious, why hasn’t it been addressed?

There is a lot of finger-pointing and excuse-making. Some federal and state officials point to the inadequacy of gas taxes to fund highways. Other people say the gas taxes would be fine if money wasn’t siphoned off for non-highway uses. The feds say the states should shoulder more of the burden for maintaining the federal interstate and highway systems, and some state officials think local communities should have some responsibility for doing so. Ideas such as managed and toll lanes are in vogue, and off-loading the costs and risks for upgrading, maintaining and managing the system to for-profit companies is popular with some state officials.

In short, one of the obstacles to funding overdue improvements to north I-25 and other parts of the state highway system is a lack of vision and consensus on what to do.

That may be changing. Business leaders in Northern Colorado have turned up the pressure on this issue. Last year they founded an initiative called the Fix North I-25 Business Alliance (www.FixNorthI-25.com). It is a key program of the Northern Colorado Legislative Alliance.

The goal of Fix North I-25 is to get the interstate widened to three lanes each way between Colorado Highway 14 in Fort Collins and Colorado 66 northeast of Longmont by 2025.

To that end, members of the alliance show up and speak up regularly at events and meetings with federal, state and local officials to press the case for securing the money to widen the interstate.

In addition to jawboning, the alliance has put specific solutions on the table. For instance, the Fix North I-25 Business Alliance commissioned a statewide transportation poll earlier this year. Likely voters said they would support renewal of the 1999 TRANS bonds program, so the alliance worked with legislative leaders on a bill to put the issue on the ballot this fall. It passed the state Senate – a head nod here to Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, for bucking his party to support the bill – but it died in the last days of the session.

As an aside, the alliance does not believe an additional lane each way solves the long-term problem. It would provide some relief over the short term, but in the decades ahead there will need to be two or three additional general-purpose and managed lanes.

Our conclusion as an alliance is that the state’s transportation system does need additional money, and leaders in Northern Colorado need to be strongly united around a common plan to secure those dollars.

To that end, local government officials in the two-county region under the leadership of Sean Conway and Barb Kirkmeyer are having conversations about the most viable funding sources for North I-25. The Fix North I-25 Business Alliance applauds their leadership.

Soon, Northern Colorado leaders need to settle on some combination of state general-fund dollars, a gas-tax increase, a short-term targeted gas tax surcharge, TRANS bonds renewal, tolling, local community contributions, federal grants or other options.

I-25 impacts our quality of life, safety and economic vitality, so we need to keep the pressure on to fix it. You can help. Go to www.FixNorthI-25.com to join the revolution.

David May, convener of the Fix North I-25 Business Alliance, is president and chief executive of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce.

on Facebook on LinkedIn