New transportation fees
Charges on gas, ride-hailing, deliveries would raise $4B in decade
Coloradans will chip in a few cents more on gas fill-ups and pay extra to have online purchases delivered, take Uber and Lyft rides, and register electric vehicles to help raise nearly $4 billion over a decade to fix the state’s transportation system, under a plan lawmakers unveiled Thursday.
Nine new fees pitched as part of an all-encompassing funding proposal — including 25 cents to have an Amazon purchase delivered and 30 cents for a Lyft ride — would touch nearly every resident, business and traveler who uses the roads in some way, although some still are being fleshed out. The majority Democrats behind the forthcoming bill estimate the rough collective impact on each consumer at $28 a year.
Although the bill that will propose the fees is still being drafted, it’s been talked about for most of this year’s legislative session. It marks the latest attempt by lawmakers to tackle a longstanding, multibillion-dol
lar shortfall for maintenance and expansion of Colorado’s highways and its broader state transportation network — a problem Colorado has fallen well short of many other states in addressing.
So far, at least one Republican has voiced public support, but some lawmakers in that party are vocally opposed to new fees. At the same time, advocacy groups that support the general direction — especially environmental advocates — were just starting to assess the details laid out Thursday.
If this latest bid is successful, the new fees would help offset Colorado’s dwindling gas tax revenue as a major funding source for highway repairs and expansions — while ramping up the amount of money available to support more electric vehicles (and convert fleets to electric), expand transit options and reduce the air pollution emitted by vehicles on Colorado’s roads.
In fact the proposal summary says $724 million of the projected $3.9 billion raised from the various new fees in the next 11 years would go toward efforts to fulfill the state’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap.
An additional $366 million would go to an expanded state multimodal options fund that supports transit and alternative mobility projects — including, potentially, laying the groundwork for the proposed Front Range Rail line. That fund also would chip in money to reduce road projects’ environmental impacts, while an additional $106 million portion of the fees would go toward a new fund to help mitigate environmental problems in Front Range communities that don’t meet federal standards.
But the bulk of the money raised by the new fees — $2.7 billion over 11 years — would, like the existing gas tax, go into the Highway Users Tax Fund. That fund is divvied up between the state, which gets 60%, and local governments across Colorado to put toward transportation projects. The gas tax, set at 22 cents per gallon, hasn’t been increased since 1991.
The Colorado Department of Transportation would receive significant money to tackle much of its 10-year, $5 billion priority project plan, which is currently one-third funded.
But the ambitious plan is hardly a Colorado transportation moonshot — it still would leave CDOT reliant upon federal grants and other funding to finish that project list.
The fees would be here to stay, however, raising money beyond that first decade.
“The bottom line is we want to make sure this is a meaningful and significant step toward funding our transportation problems in this state,” Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg said. “This is not going to be just a one-off (attempt). We really want to structurally change how we think about transportation funding — and how we think about how we’re going to use transportation in the future.”
That means providing significant money to repave thousands of miles of rural roads, he said. And it means big investments in electrification for a future when gas-guzzlers become a thing of the past.
“If we’re successful … we actually think this bill is going to save people money,” Fenberg said, noting the hundreds of dollars a year in repair and operational costs caused for drivers by deteriorating roads.
Aside from new fees, the plan also envisions an additional $1.2 billion going to transportation in the next decade or so, although much of that already is planned. That includes $430 million in stimulus money and $800 million from ongoing annual generalfund transfers to CDOT to help pay off debt from other recent transportation initiatives, with some of the fees supplementing those payments.
Range of interests shaped the proposal
The major details of the coming proposal have been promised for weeks, as Sen. Faith Winter and Rep. Matt Gray, who lead their chambers’ transportation committees, fine-tuned them in conversations with a wide — and delicately balanced — range of interests.
The talks have included Polis’ advisers, road and transit advocates, local government officials, environmental groups and industries that including trucking and ride-hailing companies.
Those stakeholders got their first look at the specifics of the proposed fees Thursday and, for the most part, still were digesting them.
Matt Frommer, a senior transportation associate at the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, voiced concern that the transit and multimodal funding envisioned by the plan might not be sufficient to meet the state’s own goals for reducing vehicle travel on roads in coming years. But he found a lot to like at first glance, especially with the electrification components.
“This would be one of the biggest investments in electric transportation outside California,” Frommer said.
Polis, in a statement, called the proposed fees package “a reasonable long-term solution to futureproof and ensure sustainable transportation funding in our state.”
Also signing up as leading sponsors of the bill are Fenberg and House Speaker Alec Garnett. Fenberg expects the bill to be introduced in the next couple of weeks.
If the bill passes, it likely will be over vocal opposition from many Republicans — stuck in the minority — who see such fees as an end-run around the state’s voters. They and conservative activists consistently urge the state to make better use of its existing budget for transportation spending.
And some opponents say the proposed fees would violate the spirit of Proposition 117, which Colorado voters approved last fall. It requires going to voters to create new fee-based enterprises of a certain size, similar to the longstanding requirement for votes on taxes under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
But the Democratic lawmakers say some new fees will use existing state enterprises with fee-issuing authority, and any new ones would generate less than the threshold of $100 million in the first five years.
Americans for Prosperity-Colorado began campaigning against the transportation bill weeks ago. A new billboard that went up Thursday morning in Adams County says, “Colorado voters must intervene. No fee on gasoline.”
“The bottom line is the voters said they are tired of this,” AFP state director Jesse Mallory told The Denver Post this year.
At least one Republican lawmaker voiced support for the budding proposal this week.
“We desperately need to modernize our transportation system,” said Sen. Kevin Priola, RHenderson, in a statement. “For almost 30 years, we’ve been kicking the can down the road, and as a result, we’ve seen traffic congestion massively increase and our roads fall into disrepair.”