This U.S. 85 bridge in Douglas County is one of the 124 poor-rated bridges on the list to be replaced with the controversial FASTER auto fee increases. Some opponents will try to repeal the new revenue in 2010.

Follow the money, and you’ll find most of the Top Ten Transportation Stories of 2009.

The transportation funding crisis and the difficult efforts to establish a sustainable annual program are at the foundation of many of the important transportation infrastructure stories.

From Washington to Colfax and Sherman, to your closest light rail station, the disruption to programs caused by the volatility of transportation funding dominated the stories of 2009 – one of the worst economic years in generations.

The entire staff at Inside Lane, together with his wife, Harriet, reviewed the major stories to come up with this list for your consideration.

An initiative headed to next November’s ballot would lop off the second-largest current source of Colorado’s road funding to nearly one-fourth of its current level and eliminate the newly imposed bridge replacement and road repair fees of the FASTER program.

If it had been in effect in 2009, Proposition 101 would have eliminated $134.4 million, more than 17 percent, of the Highway Users Tax Fund from which the Colorado Department of Transportation, the state’s 64 counties and its municipalities receive funding for street and highway maintenance and construction.

7News KMGH reports that the Colorado Department of Transportation has selected Jalisco International to make the emergency repairs on the 104th Avenue bridge, which CDOT closed Nov. 16 after an inspection showed the concrete on a pier cap had deteriorated.

It’s a temporary fix that would take the bridge into the next year. Go to 7News at TheDenverChannel to see the entire story.

Reps. Joe Rice and Frank McNulty were all smiles before going after each other on the FASTER bill at the Colorado Contractors Association 2010 Legislative Kickoff panel on Thursday. CCA photo by Terry Kish.

Telling a group of transportation contractors that you’d vote the repeal the FASTER auto registration fees that are earmarked to replace unsafe bridges and make highway safety repairs might seem overly frank.

Make that Overly Frank. Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, told attendees at the Colorado Contractors Association’s 2010 Legislative Session Kickoff conference that while he won’t introduce such a bill, he would vote for one if it came up.

That’s like going to Vail and declaring you’d vote to shut down the lifts during Christmas week.

But McNulty’s colleague from the other side of the aisle, Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton – the House sponsor of FASTER in the last session – counterpunched by embracing FASTER as “the first new money for transportation in 18 years.” He challenged McNulty not to vote against it unless he can come up with another source for the $250 million a year FASTER is expected to provide.

View Colorado’s Poor-Rated State Highway Bridges in a larger map

The Great Depression was a time of significant road building meant to get Americans back to work as well as back on the road, and out on the eastern plains of Colorado a number of highway bridges were erected. At least six of them on CO 96 in Crowley and Kiowa counties were made of wood.

Many of these old bridges remain in service today. Six of the 17 bridges along CO 96 as it wends its way toward Kansas through the two rural counties were in place in the 1930s.

But early next year along this lengthy, lonesome and windblown stretch of two-lane road, four wooden bridges will be replaced with funds now being collected from Colorado automobile owners under the new FASTER bill.

Save for a terrible event a year and a half ago, one other Depression-era wooden bridge on CO 96 would have been on the list. It was destroyed when a wildfire swept eastward along the highway toward the town of Ordway and burned its wooden substructure, collapsing the 47-foot span into the Numa Drain Canal. Two firefighters died enroute to defend Ordway when their truck plunged through the smoke and into the canal.

CDOT Resurfacing Project US 24-285. CDOT Photo.

Colorado’s gas tax collections in the last fiscal year dropped 6½ percent to the lowest level since 2001, bringing fresh urgency to transportation planners’ quest for a reliable, stable and predictable method of funding projects.

The state’s primary source of money to pay for transportation projects has lately been an erratic roller coaster, ending up in 2009 just slightly above where it was in 2001 for little gain during the decade. Yet over the same time period, the Colorado Construction Cost Index, measuring how much it costs to build roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure, nearly doubled.

“We have continually been adjusting our forecasts down,” said Heather Copp, chief financial officer of the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The cost of transportation construction went up 95 percent just from 2001 to this year, according to tabulations of all bids received by CDOT over that time. Doing the math, that means the buying power of the gas tax dollar in 2001 has declined to 52.6 cents today. CDOT, in addition to counties and cities that get transportation money from the state HUTF, are faced with having to use shrinking dollars to keep up with growing demand.

Without next year’s revenue from higher vehicle registration fees under the FASTER program, overall transportation spending would decrease by nearly 11 percent instead of going up six percent in CDOT’s proposed budget for 2010-11, unveiled this week.

The proposed budget for the Colorado Department of Transportation for the new fiscal year that starts July 1 next year is $1.03 billion, $56.5 million more than the current year’s budget. But revenue from the FASTER program makes up an estimated $160.6 million of that budget.

Removing that funding – as some critics of the increased fees have suggested either legislatively or by means of an initiative – would result in a net decrease next year of $104 million from CDOT’s current budget.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter Monday unveiled a proposed $1.03 billion state transportation budget for fiscal-year 2010-11, the Denver Business Journal reports.

The spending plan for the Colorado Department of Transportation represents a 6 percent increase from the $973.5 million 2009 budget, but it’s much smaller than the $1.5 billion transportation budget in fiscal 2008.

The budget makes use of the “FASTER” bill that Ritter signed into law in March. That measure is designed to be phased in over three years, and will raise funds for repair of Colorado roads and bridges through hiking various fees.

Monday, Ritter’s staff said the FASTER measure is generating an estimated $160.6 million for the state’s 2010 budget for bridge and roadway repair and safety work. Another $61.1 million will go directly to local agencies from FASTER.

Go to the Denver Business Journal to read the entire article.

View US 285 Resurfacing Project in a larger map

U.S. 285 between Bailey and Richmond Hill Road would get a new asphalt surface along with safety improements such as lengthened merge areas at the end of climbing lanes for slower vehicles.

About $16.5 million in road safety and resurfacing projects are headed to the Denver metro area through next summer because of the first year’s allocation of increased auto registration fees under the FASTER bill.

The projects for the area covered by the Denver Regional Council of Governments are on a list of 41 roadway safety and improvement projects funded statewide by FASTER’s first year of revenues totaling just under $80 million. The list is based on August estimates of revenue and could change depending on how much actually comes in.

The single largest FASTER road safety project in the DRCOG area is the proposed asphalt resurfacing of U.S. 285 from Bailey to Richmond Hill Road, estimated at $4.5 million, more than a quarter of the DRCOG area’s total. But it is more than a new asphalt overlay. CDOT plans to enhance driver safety by lengthening the tapered ends of several of the climbing lanes, giving more room for slower vehicles to merge into the through lane at the tops of hills.

This week’s Colorado State of Mind with host Cynthia Hessin features a discussion on the FASTER bill with Rep. Buffie McFadyen (D-Pueblo), chair of the House Transportation and Energy Committee, Rep. Frank McNulty (R-Douglas), a member of the committee, Carla Perez, senior transportation policy advisor to Gov. Bill Ritter, and Tony Milo, executive director of the Colorado Contractors Association. You can watch it here: