This is my last post on Kevin Flynn’s Inside Lane.

Next week, I will start a new position at the Regional Transportation District. I will join the FasTracks public information team as the manager for the Eagle P3 project. That’s the innovative public-private partnership initiative that will finance, design, build and operate the FasTracks commuter rail lines to Denver International Airport, Arvada-Wheat Ridge and south Westminster.

In this final post, I’ll recommend some of the past stories that have run here with links at the end. The site and its archives will remain online for the time being while I am in discussions with third parties who are interested in transitioning it to other capable hands. I believe we need to have a steady source of Colorado transportation news that doesn’t wait for something bad to happen or for a story to reach a level of conflict before you get to hear about it. Fact is, I have written more stories here since July than I did at the Rocky Mountain News because there’s no space limitation here and because this site is dedicated to nothing but transportation — so I can write almost any story that comes along. If you don’t like transportation stories, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.

And I had no trouble coming up with stories. Things are happening every day, and my goal was to bring you that wide range of stories, from the weightiest crises to the geekiest tales. I was sometimes amazed at the appetite out there for stories about “how stuff works.” Among the most popular stories was a slide show on the electronic gizmos mounted on poles along the highways, detailing what they are and what they do. And who knew I would bump into strangers on the street who remembered the story I did revealing how CDOT comes up with the letter-number designations it bolts to its bridges?

Let me leave you with a few thoughts.

Having an effective and efficient system of transportation infrastructure is simply vital to Colorado’s quality of life. That’s always been true, from the first gold-rush trails, to the transcontinental railroad connection, to the Valley Highway, to Denver International Airport, to FasTracks, to CDOT’s 28 Strategic Corridors.

But it’s rarely been more at stake than now, in the midst of this very serious recession.

I believe that investing now in modern, well-functioning transportation infrastructure will position Colorado to emerge more strongly from this downturn, and not just in the short term. Putting stimulus dollars into highway projects isn’t “make-work” for a few months. It’s building and improving the roads we need to support the timely and efficient movement of people, workers, goods and services that make this state’s economy work when the paving is done. The rate at which we emerge from this recession will be accelerated to the degree we have improved roads, transit and air service.

In some way or other, almost everything we do at work and at play, day in and day out, relies on transportation. Even if you never leave your house, your well-being still depends upon it. Without properly investing in maintaining what our predecessors have given us and in building what our descendants will need to rely on, we will be failing in our duty to pass on a better place. If Interstate 70 had dead-ended at the Mousetrap, as the original interstate highway plan envisioned in the 1950s, what would the state of commerce be on Colorado’s Western Slope? It took determined political leadership and consensus to push that highway up and under the Continental Divide and west toward our connection to Utah and ultimately to California.

To achieve this, it is essential that Colorado fixes the current patchwork system of funding transportation. The gas tax is broken. It’s a per-gallon levy, last raised in 1992, and long since succumbed to inflation. It can’t be raised again without a statewide TABOR vote, and good luck with that one. To keep fingers in the dike, our representatives have tried many different approaches over the last two decades. But we’ve ended up with an unreliable, unstable and unpredictable revenue package for transportation that defies good planning and scheduling.

I believe that it matters less whose plan or whose strategy for solving this dilemma wins out. What matters more is that it be resolved. Don’t get bogged down in the day to day obstacles to doing this work, but focus on the goal of having a well-functioning transportation system that serves this state’s needs and allows its citizens to have a good quality of life.

And that brings us to the November election, when you will decide on three ballot measures that would severely cripple the people’s ability to sustain good infrastructure investment in Colorado. Proposition 101, Amendment 60 and Amendment 61 are bad for you. Any one of them on its own is harmful enough. Together, they are a knock-out blow to Colorado’s ability to emerge from this bad economy in a competitive position to attract job growth and to maintain a good quality of life.

Imagine wanting to buy a house and being told you cannot get a 30-year mortgage. Cutting your paycheck in half while trying to pay your bills and provide for your family. In effect, this trio of ballot measures chokes the people’s government. If they had been in place at the time, T-REX would not have been built. Denver International Airport could not have been financed. Your neighborhood school’s budget would be sliced in half.

Specifically on transportation, Prop 101 arbitrarily slashes total auto registration fees to a flat $10, without any regard or thought as to what it costs for CDOT, your county road and bridge department or your city public works division to provide the highways, plowing and expansion you need. Why $10? Because that’s what the authors of the measure feel like paying. The figure bears no relationship to the reality of costs today. Simple anger at last year’s auto fee increase, which is earmarked for replacement of failing bridges and road safety projects, is driving this out-of-control measure.

Fans of the measure don’t even understand the problems. Several blogs have picked up a recent story in a publication called The Constitutionalist Today that goes on a tirade about the FASTER bill’s fee increase, but overstates it by double. It claimed FASTER increased registration fees AND added the bridge and road charges on top of that. False. FASTER increased total registration fees only by adding the bridge and road charges. Even with the new fees, the state is still behind in maintenance needs, without even getting to the need for capacity and mobility enhancement. Like being stuck in traffic? These ballot measures will severely restrict our ability to solve our transportation problems.

I want to extend my thanks to several people who have been of immense help to me in getting Inside Lane going. This site has steadily built a following of about 300 unique readers a day and was building a loyalty with more than 3,200 people who visited Inside Lane more than 100 times since I went live in August.

Foremost is my wife, Harriet Novak, who went out with me the Sunday after the Rocky Mountain News closed to help me take pictures and do interviews on the story I didn’t get to do in that last publication – Jim Moffet, the RTD driver who was injured helping an elderly woman across Federal Boulevard in the snow. The Colorado State Patrol had ticketed him for jaywalking, but I believed the ticket was bogus. It is not jaywalking to cross where Jim was crossing. The patrol voided the ticket but never acknowledged it was in error. I posted that story on our fledgling blog, I Want My Rocky.com, and it soon led to other writers posting news there.

That is what led eventually to Inside Lane. Harriet has been the most supportive and encouraging partner I could hope to have.

Steve Welchert, the political consultant, floated the name “Inside Lane” over coffee at Common Grounds, and a day later the PR guru Pete Webb suggested over lunch at Yia Yia’s that I brand it with my name because of my many years covering transportation at the News. Many thanks to them.

Steve Foster, an internet producer at the Rocky and the driving force behind I Want My Rocky and Rocky Mountain Independent.com, designed the original site and traffic sign logo, then worked with me through the redesign I launched in February that doubled my traffic. My new logo was designed by Angie Lee at Grindstone Graphics.

I owe the continued presence of Inside Lane to my major sponsor, Colorado Contractors Association, and its executive director, Tony Milo, and to the encouragement of MOVE Colorado and its executive director, Randy Harrison. Without their support, Inside Lane would have pulled over to the shoulder many months ago.

UInside Lane was founded on the idea that the public benefits from having a well-rounded knowledge of all aspects of our very important transportation infrastructure system, from how we pay for it, build it and use it to how we think about it and have fun with it.

There are a number of stories still in the pipeline that I didn’t get to do. Among them were pieces on the planning for reconstruction of the Wadsworth interchange on the Sixth Avenue Freeway in Lakewood, updates on the U.S. 36 corridors plans to leverage its stimulus grant into a larger federal loan to extend the car pool-bus-toll lane system toward Boulder, decisions on the Interstate 70 Mountain Corridor and an examination of cashless tolling’s potential to replace the gas tax entirely and overhaul our inadequate system for infrastructure funding.

And of course, continuing coverage of the debate and campaign over the three scorched-earth amendments on the fall ballot.

Also in the works was some more of the geeky stuff that proved popular among readers: How is Colorado going to change our license plate numbering now that we’re approaching the letter “Z” in the current three number-three letter configuration? A tour of Colorado’s various Scenic Byways during the “Staycation” season. A story on the true first transcontinental railroad link – in Strasburg, Colo., not in Utah. It was through Denver and Strasburg that you could first ride coast to coast in a single train when the Kansas Pacific drove the last spike at Comanche Creek in Strasburg in 1870. The Union Pacific mainline that gets all the publicity still had a gap at the Missouri River in Omaha, where until a bridge was completed in 1872, railroad passengers had to take a boat across the Missouri and change trains.

Until a decision is made on transferring this site to other management, the archives remain here for you to peruse.

As mentioned, I want to point you to some in particular.

Presenting information in an interactive way:
• Take a look at 124 poor-rated bridges on the state highway system that the FASTER bridge fee is earmarked to replacing. Check out the pictures, ratings, year of construction and where each bridge stands in the process.
• Metro Denver’s Habitual Freeway Bottlenecks and What’s Being Done About Them.
• CDOT’s Fall and Winter Construction Projects.

Many stories concentrated on projects or jobs that demonstrated an efficient use of public resources:
• One of the first ones was this piece on how Denver’s investment in fixing up the Sixth Avenue Viaduct saved taxpayers a lot more money in the long run.
• CDOT’s road swap with Montrose on U.S. 50 to save money for both.
• DIA’s system of solar energy to operate its jet fuel pumping operation.
• RTD piggybacks on another agency’s order to get more low-polluting buses.
• FasTracks plans to break off a segment of the I-225 light rail corridor for early construction.
• The G Line light rail would return when the FasTracks light rail corridor is completed.
• RTD’s refurbishing of the 16th Street Mall shuttles was done in-house and under budget.
• FasTracks’ recent drop in cost is partly attributable to efforts to trim the projects as much as feasible while maintaining the same end points.
• The Eagle P3 FasTracks project includes construction of an initial segment of the commuter rail corridor to Westminster.

The FASTER bill, which increased vehicle registration fees last year to help replace poor-rated bridges and carry out road safety projects, is now the target of a repeal attempt as part of Prop 101. I thought it was important for you to know, when you’re asked to plunk down an extra $9 or $18 to replace deteriorating bridges, just what that means. Among the stories Inside Lane did on FASTER:
• CDOT’s first year’s list of 17 bridges to replace included four old wooden bridges on a lonely highway out on the southeast plains. There used to be five wooden bridges. One burned out in the April 2008 Ordway grassfire, and two volunteer firefighters died when their truck plunged off the abutment while enroute to try to save the town.
• The Transportation Commission last year selected 17 candidate bridges for replacement with the first year’s FASTER revenue, and this story included a slide show of all 17 and an interactive locator map with their details. This kind of report is what I loved about doing Inside Lane.
• The commission then decided to take up the issue of issuing bonds backed by FASTER revenue in order to accelerate the replacement of poor-rated bridges.
• As the year went on, CDOT started to draw up long-term lists of road safety projects that FASTER would fund.
• The low bidder on the first FASTER bridge project was a Walsenburg contractor. This story included an interactive Google Street View image of the bridge.