Denver International Airport turned 15 years old over the weekend. A milestone for sure for a facility that had a difficult time in development and construction, and that many critics even predicted would never open or go belly-up financially within 18 months. But what was on the news about it? Cupcakes.

Tom Clark, Executive Vice President, Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, explores the issues surrounding the timing of a potential RTD decision for a second FasTracks tax election.

A streetcar line on Colfax Avenue between downtown Denver and Aurora’s Fitzsimons medical campus may or may not prove to be a good idea. That answer depends on studies yet to be completed. But no study is needed to know that it’s not a good idea to divert money from fixing roads and unsafe bridges to help pay for it.

This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Maybe it is.

But what do neo-Nazis and the Orthopedic Physicians of Colorado have in common?

Well, they both have volunteered to pick up litter along stretches of Colorado state highways.

Now what is the difference between neo-Nazis and the Orthopedic Physicians of Colorado?

You’ll never turn on your 10 o’clock news and see a top story on the Orthopedic Physicians volunteering to pick up roadside litter.

That’s a shame. I thought you might like to know about some of the other groups that are toiling along the roadsides in metro Denver picking up trash not for any other reason than making their community better.

(See postscript inside for an update on this story)

CDOT is learning that no good deed goes unpunished.

For nearly 30 years it has had a practice during snowstorms of not plowing state highways that had light traffic during the overnight shift. Those highways were plowed 14 hours out of the day during storms, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., if they served fewer than 1,000 vehicles a day.

This has been CDOT policy since at least the 1980s. What happened was that in December last year, in an effort to be helpful to the travelling public, it decided to start posting signs on those stretches of roads alerting drivers to the plowing hours.

This apparently caused many folks to mistakenly think this was a brand new policy, another cutback by Gov. Bill Ritter and an ill-advised safety problem, when in fact rural drivers have been living with this practice for as long as anyone can remember.

As usual, there is more nuance here and less controversy than the sound bites would have you believe.

Roadgeeks like to name things.

Today we’re going to try to hang a name on something.

I’m proposing that we give a household name to the interchange in the Denver Tech Center where Interstate 225 dumps into Interstate 25. I say we call it the Full House. That’s the name that fellow roadgeek Duncan Shaw, a news producer at CBS4 Denver, proposed for it in 2001.

Read more to see why…

By Bob Brewster
Vice President, Colorado Rail Passenger Association

Why would a group of especially devoted and knowledgeable rail advocates bring a legal action against the redevelopment plan for Denver Union Station? In a word: Violations. It violates good principles of transportation, it violates the Vision Statement of the plan, it violates fiscal prudence, it violates the historical character and protection of the station, and it violates the trust of the voters who taxed themselves for an efficient rail system for their future mobility requirements.

The House passed legislation this afternoon sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-MN to extend the Federal law authorizing spending on federal-aid highways and transit projects which was set to expire on September 30, Reason Foundation blogger Shirley Ybarra writes.

Most importantly, the legislation does not address a looming $8.7 billion rescission of existing contract authority (enacted in the 2005 transportation law known as SAFETEA-LU and amended by a 2007 energy law), which will be executed next week by the Federal Highway Administration if not repealed. Oberstar did not discuss the rescission issue on the House floor, but his spokesman said a repeal of the rescission was left out of the measure because House rules would require an offset to pay for it through higher taxes or reduced spending elsewhere.

The rescission issue is a very real problem for the state departments of transportation as they will be negatively impacted in a total of $8.7 billion.

“This rescission will amount to real dollar losses to programs and projects, and will have a devastating effect on many state departments of transportation and reverse the positive economic gains brought about by the recovery act,” John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “Colorado would lose $115 million in contract authority.”

Commentary By Tony Milo
Executive Director of the Colorado Contractors Association

Coloradans own a conservatively estimated $500 million per year unfunded liability on public bridge, highway, interchange and tunnel infrastructure. While a staggering sum in any single year, the cumulative effect year after year undermines road safety and our state’s economic recovery. That Colorado’s people, families, businesses and leaders continue accumulating a $500 million annual deferred maintenance debt is unsustainable.

That $500 million annual buildup, however, disguises the full magnitude of the “quiet crisis” Coloradans now confront.

If we intend to significantly reduce traffic congestion, establish better connections between regions within the state, improve local roads and strategically expand transit options, Coloradans need to invest three times that amount – a conservatively estimated $1.5 billion – in new, annually dedicated, inflation adjusted revenue.

On behalf of the Colorado Contractors Association (CCA), our 400 construction, equipment, goods and service provider companies, and the over 30,000 workers CCA members collectively employ, I invite you to join the men and women of CCA in consciously choosing a path to enhance the quality of life and economic vitality for all Coloradans.

So was T-REX really under budget?

When RTD closed out the books last week on its half of the T-REX multimodal expansion along Interstates 25 and 225, it finished with $3.7 million left over out of its $879 million share of the $1.67 billion budget it split with the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Skeptics cry foul. They point out that the Major Investment Study on the Southeast Corridor, completed in 1997, said the light rail project would cost $445 million. They want you to think RTD went double over its budget.

The skeptics are either uninformed or deliberately misleading you. They are feeding you an apple and claiming it’s an orange.