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Beltway proposal a boondoggle

Friday, October 26 at 12:00 AM

By Rep. Gwyn Green

The proposal to connect the Northwest Parkway to C-470 has residents of the western metro area asking: Is it a Road to Nowhere, A Bridge Too Far, or a Lost Highway?

This latest pipe dream of beltway proponents comes from the failed Northwest Parkway which leased its operations to a foreign company. This foreign company, Brisa, promises two things: to raise tolls for the next 99 years for Coloradans and to give a $100 million payoff to the directors of the Northwest Parkway if they can complete the beltway.

Let me bring you up to speed. While I’m doing this, hum along to that famous song, Won’t Get Fooled Again.

When mayors and traffic engineers in the local governments of the Northwest Quadrant in Jefferson County met with the Colorado Department of Transportation in 2003, they asked for congestion relief. What they got was a beltway — even though CDOT’s own figures showed there wasn’t enough traffic to pay for it. Cost: $1.6 billion. So CDOT thought they would toll it, but found out tolls would only pay $600 million of the $1.6 billion.

But now that Brisa’s in town, anything is possible. This foreign company wants our roads. They want to charge high tolls. Heck, they are already raising the tolls for the parkway from $2 to $3, with more raises to come. And if they don’t get enough toll revenues to satisfy their stockholders, then parkway directors have promised to let their roads parallel to the parkway degrade so that traffic will be forced to take the toll road.

And traffic analysis after traffic analysis has shown that there is just not enough traffic on Colorado 93 to justify turning it into a 12-lane elevated toll road (CDOT’s toll road option) over the tiny town of Golden. The cost is prohibitive, financially and environmentally.

A few years back, proponents of the beltway gathered together the cities and county involved and convinced them to pay for a good traffic analysis. It found that instead of a beltway, four lanes on Colorado 93 and four lanes on McIntyre and Indiana streets would solve traffic congestion.

Why hasn’t this happened? Governments much more powerful than tiny Golden really want a beltway and use their considerable political power to try to get it. Whenever Golden dares to speak up, they are tarred as uncooperative.

If Brisa gets the toll road it wants to complete the beltway, we can count on increased traffic congestion, more serious ozone violations, increased tolls, degraded side roads — and all of this for the next 99 years.

To give this perspective, what happed 99 years ago? Well, for one thing, Henry Ford unveiled his invention of the automobile. What will our transportation options be 99 years from now?
I think policy-makers ought to be accountable. That means no 99-year contracts. It means not building an unnecessary vanity beltway. It means not selling our infrastructure to foreign companies — especially one like Brisa, which comes into the game with negative bond ratings. It means not guaranteeing foreign companies’ profits at the expense of our citizens.

So don’t let beltway proponents fool you. A beltway will not solve congestion and will probably worsen it.

It’s a boondoggle with no accountability, built upon a failed foundation.

State Rep. Gwyn Green is a Democrat representing Lakewood.

READER COMMENTS

Representative Green is following the precedent of the Boulder County commissioners (Democrats) of 20 years ago. 'There shall not be a beltway anywhere on the pristine lands of Boulder County...But a beltway might be okay'. Now, of course, all of us living in Longmont and to a lesser extent, Berthoud and Loveland have no alternative but to head east to I-25 and south if we want to go west. (6 miles each way out of the way.) Of course we don't use the beltway. It doesn't go anywhere...except to a shopping center. There is a fine new divided highway (US 287) from Loveland all the way south to Broomfield, which we could use but for the missing link. We are in the 'you can't get there from here' group. Has Rep Green ever tried the tortuous drive from Longmont through Boulder, to highway 93 then making the untenable decision about whether to go up the canyon on 72 or try to wend our way through the back streets of Golden to catch I 70? There are nearly 200,00 people in the towns I've mentioned. Do you suppose the traffic through the mousetrap, and the stop-and-go on north I- 25 could be reduced by completing the link? Of course. Less miles, less pollution too.

Posted by Gordon Hills on October 26, 2007 02:39 PM