TRAFFIC ON I-70 WILL KEEP GETTING WORSE
Millions of dollars in improvements await voters’ OK
Projects that would ease fist-pounding traffic delays on the Interstate 70 mountain corridor from Denver to the Western Slope are backing up, and those hours-long waits to hit the slopes are likely to get worse before they get better.
EISENHOWER TUNNEL» Projects that would ease fist-pounding traffic delays on the Interstate 70 mountain corridor from Denver to the Western Slope are backing up like cars on a Saturday morning during ski season.
And with millions upon millions of dollars in projects awaiting voter approval, Colorado Department of Transportation officials say, those hourslong waits to hit the slopes are likely to get worse before they get better.
“You always get what you pay for,” CDOT executive director Shailen Bhatt said Wednesday morning as traffic barreled by just outside the tunnel in Clear Creek County. “What I would say to people is: ‘Right now, everybody in Colorado is paying in an unintelligent way for underinvestment in transportation.’ So you’re sitting in traffic. You’re hitting potholes.”
He added: “When people say, ‘I don’t want to pay more in my taxes,’ what they are really saying is ‘I want to pay more with my time sitting in traffic.’ ”
Proposals to create a tolled express lane on westbound I-70 through Idaho Springs — a sibling to the new, successful lane for eastbound traffic — remain in the planning phase and are expected to be completed next year. But CDOT says it doesn’t have the roughly $70 million needed to pay for that construction right now.
The department also lacks the hundreds of millions of dollars it needs to fix the traffic-choking Floyd Hill, which CDOT just recently began eyeing for improvements sometime around 2020.
And then there’s the estimated $1 billion it would take to drill a new tunnel under the Continental Divide to alleviate congestion in the Eisenhower and Johnson tunnels.
Bhatt said CDOT doesn’t have money in its budget to pay for these projects and that the only way to fund them would be through a ballot initiative. Costs are mounting across Colorado for crisis-level road fixes, and state lawmakers have been unable to find a compromise to pay for upgrades.
CDOT says its efforts to create toll lanes and roads have helped but only pay a fraction of the bill. For example, toll revenue from I-70’s new eastbound express lane only accounts for about 30 percent of its cost.
“There is no way that we can raise revenue any other way,” Bhatt said. “We are going to have a long list of projects that are ready to go to construction when the voters decide they are ready.”
If funding doesn’t come, the projections are grim, as more and more cars each weekend travel the mountain corridor.
“Even 25 years ago, traffic
would back up, but it would be for an hour or two,” said Steve Harelson, a CDOT program engineer for the area. “Now, it’s four or five hours. What we’re going to move into is six or eight hours, or 10 hours. And then people just stop going.”
That’s the fear of towns and ski resorts that rely on I-70 for business, said Margaret Bowes, executive director of the I-70 Mountain Corridor Coalition, which of 28 local governments, Vail Resorts and other businesses.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., on Tuesday toured the Eisenhower Tunnel, where he took stock of its aging infrastructure and efforts to modernize the tunnel’s fire suppression system.
CDOT says it has roughly one close call a month with regard to vehicle fires happening inside the tunnel.
“They are creating a miracle out of the budget they have,” Bennet said of CDOT. “If (President Donald Trump) were serious about this, and I hope that he will be, he could submit tomorrow an infrastructure package to the House of Representatives. … He could get a huge vote from Republicans and Democrats supporting a massive infrastructure bill for this country. That would then pass the Senate and he could stand in the Rose Garden and sign that bill.”
Bennet, standing outside the east entrance to the Eisenhower Tunnel, said politics continue to be a roadblock for Congress and projects such as funding I-70 mountain corridor upconsists grades.
“Can you imagine what the debate would be in the United States’ Congress today about which of these tunnels they should build first or whether should build one of these tunnels?” Bennet said, barely audible above the roar of tractor trailers rushing by. “Or whether Loveland Pass would do just fine? That would be the attitude.”