U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue said intelligent and greater investment in infrastructure projects could literally pave the way for a sustained economic rebound as the country seeks efficiencies from its transportation network to compete in the global economy.

“To meet our infrastructure needs, we need to boost public investments while working to ensure that the money is spent wisely in areas of genuine need,” Donohue said. “Reauthorization of the nation’s core highway bill is essential.”

Renewal of the federal-aid highway reauthorization bill has been stalled in Congress since the previous five-year, $286 billion bill expired Sept. 30. Instead of passing a bill that would double that spending, Congress has instead punted and passed a stop-gap bill at the old law’s spending levels, which transportation experts have said is too low to meet current infrastructure spending needs.

Go to Logistics Management to see the entire article.

The Colorado Department of Transportation submitted an application today on behalf of the U.S. 36 corridor to receive funds available through the U.S. Transportation’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Discretionary Grant Program.

The application, a collaborative effort by CDOT, the Regional Transportation District, the U.S. 36 Mayors and Commissioners Coalition, ten local governments and 36 Commuting Solutions, requests between $160 million and $260 million to build a portion of the first phase of improvements identified in the U.S. 36 Final Environmental Impact Statement.

A TIGER Discretionary Grant would leverage $60 million in state and RTD FasTracks funding currently available, enabling the region to implement smaller, phased projects within the larger corridor. A larger discretionary TIGER Grant would allow the Department, in partnership with RTD, to complete the HOV/HOT managed lane so that it runs the length of the entire corridor.

The first phase of improvements could extend the high occupancy vehicle/high occupancy toll lanes in each direction from Denver to Boulder, implement Bus Rapid Transit service and connect a commuter bikeway (all components of FasTracks) for the full length of the corridor at a cost of $550 million.

“This project of regional and national significance provides an innovative alternative for transportation in this corridor,” said CDOT Executive Director Russell George. “While the region’s long-range transportation plan identifies more than $700 million to build these improvements, full funding for this first phase is not expected to be available until 2035, if at all.”

U.S. 36 is a congested and rapidly growing corridor carrying between 80,000 and 100,000 daily vehicle trips. It currently operates at close to 90 percent volume to capacity; volume to capacity ratio is projected to exceed 1.0 by 2035. Average daily trips are estimated to grow by 50 percent by 2035, totaling 165,000 vehicles daily. U.S. 36 commuters experience four hours of severe congestion daily, contributing to the annual 60-hr. delay average experienced by Denver regional drivers.

“U.S. 36 is also a regionally significant employment corridor,” said Louisville Mayor Chuck Sisk. “Nearly 17 percent of the region’s business and employment is derived from the U.S. 36 corridor, with corridor employment growth expected to increase by 53 percent in 2035. U.S. 36 is home to the state’s largest population of construction workers and nearly half of Colorado’s federal laboratories and research centers. ”

“With a high concentration of businesses in the high tech and renewable energy industries, U.S. 36 plays an important role in the emerging national economy. These transportation improvements are necessary to grow job creation and economic vitality in a sustainable way,” said Patrick Quinn, Mayor of Broomfield.

Project benefits include improved mobility and connectivity, expanded mode choice for commuters, infrastructure repair and replacement and reductions in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Transit riders, HOVs and SOVs will see up to 25-minutes travel time savings. Near-term transit ridership will see an increase of 26 percent, which will double in the next two decades. Carpooling will also see an increase an increase of 5 percent due to the project implementation. The U.S. 36 project is estimated to create a maximum of 7,234 short-term jobs and $23 billion in long-term employment benefit.

“The U.S. 36 Mayors and Commissioners Coalition (MCC) has spanned 10 years with a common vision that supports the unique quality of life of our corridor. This is not ‘your grandfather’s transportation project’ of ever-expanding pavement. It’s a sustainable project that recognizes the multimodal, environmental and economic values of our area.” said Will Toor, Boulder County Commissioner, the longest serving member of the U.S. 36 MCC.

Founded on the strength of partnerships between CDOT, RTD, local government and private business, in an effort to raise awareness and secure funding for U.S. 36 transportation improvements, 36 Commuting Solutions has launched the Help Us Fix U.S. 36 campaign, a grassroots political effort to compel stakeholders to contact state and federal lawmakers and urge support of the U.S. 36 TIGER grant application. For information about the Help Us Fix U.S. 36 campaign, visit 36commutingsolutions.org.

About 36 Commuting Solutions: 36 Commuting Solutions is a Colorado 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance the mobility of commuters along the U.S. 36 corridor for today and the future. Our public/private coalition consists of nearly 50 businesses and the seven local governments between Westminster and Longmont. Together, we advocate for long-range funding and transportation improvements to U.S. 36.

Debbie Hersman, the new chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said Tuesday that employees of the agency are barred from using any wireless device behind the wheel while on duty. The restriction applies whether the device is hands-free or not.

The action appears to make the NTSB the first federal agency to adopt an outright ban of wireless devices while driving, according to the agency and highway safety experts. It also puts stricter rules on NTSB employees than the citizens of all 50 states.

Read the entire article at USA Today.

But they’re not so great for bicyclists.

A cyclist waits for a green signal on top of the new pavement markings being tested in Redmond and Kirkland, Wash. The marking shows cyclists the best place to stop in order to trigger the signal.

As many American cities, including Denver, move toward making the streets more bicycle-friendly, traffic engineers are tweaking the system so that cyclists can trigger green lights.

And in the Seattle suburbs of Redmond and Kirkland, they’re coming up with new pavement markings to help cyclists.

Close-up shows the detail of the new pavement marking, next to the embedded inductive loop that triggers the green signal.

The best place for a bicycle to be detected is near the embedded wire rather than in the middle of the loop.

Kirkland traffic engineers have placed the new markings at seven intersections. In Redmond, they are on 150th Avenue NE, along with shared-lane markings called sharrows showing bicyclists where they are to ride. The shared lane means cyclists can ride in mixed traffic with autos rather than marking a separate bicycle lane near the shoulder.

If cyclists stop on the markings, traffic engineers say they electromagnetic loop will detect it and give them their place in the signal cycle.

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.

Since the project was finished 22 months earlier than the original schedule, this forms the basis for RTD’s claim that the Southeast Corridor, which extended light rail from Broadway Station to Lincoln Avenue in Douglas County and Parker Road in Aurora, was completed under budget and ahead of schedule.

CDOT makes the same claim for its highway portion of the project, which added lanes to both freeways, reconfigured the “Full House” interchange of I-25/225, added Intelligent Transportation Systems for better traffic management, replaced all of the out-of-date bridges and fixed the drainage problem that caused storm flooding under the Logan Street overpass. CDOT finished $8 million under its $790 million budget.

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. The project indeed came in under budget, for both RTD and CDOT.

The $445 million projected cost of the southeast corridor light rail outlined in the 1997 MIS was not a budget. As it states specifically in the document, it is in 1995 dollars. Patient drivers will recall that the project was built between 2001 and 2006.

It is intellectually dishonest to portray the estimated costs in an initial study document as some sort of final budget, because the costs are stated in constant dollars – what it would cost if it could all be built right then and there. That’s because no one knows in the beginning when, or whether, the project can be built so it’s impossible to set up an actual budget. You simply don’t know in what year you’ll have to buy the steel or concrete or labor. All you can do is quantify how much of each item you think you’ll need, and state its cost at the time.

In this case, it’s even worse. The 1997 MIS stated costs in 1995 dollars.

Projects are not paid for in “constant dollars,” they are paid for in “year-of-expenditure dollars.” They are not the same thing. When it’s time to make an actual budget, estimators take the unit quantities for each piece of work, determine in what year it is needed and then estimate inflation trends to come up with an actual “year of expenditure” cost.

In the case of T-REX, trying to compare the estimate of light rail cost when it was stated in 1995 dollars to the budget for when it actually would be built between 2001 and 2006 is, simply, bad math.

Skeptics are feeding you an apple and claiming it’s an orange.

One other factor makes the comparison with the early figure bogus.

The MIS outlined a different project. The Southeast Corridor light rail plan in 1997 had only 10 stations in the first phase; the T-REX project advanced the Yale, Orchard and Dayton stations from a later phase and incorporated them into the opening day plan.

But the biggest difference between the 1997 MIS and the 1999 EIS wasn’t with RTD, it was with CDOT.

When Bill Owens became governor in 1999, he ordered up a new look at the highway improvements that the MIS outlined for I-25 and 225. Because CDOT hadn’t been able to identify any source of money to do a full blown widening of the freeways, the 1997 study had no added through lanes at all. It consisted only of some shoulder widening for breakdown and emergency access, auxiliary lanes between the ramps between Arapahoe and Orchard roads, the braided ramp separating traffic entering northbound at Belleview Avenue from the traffic exiting onto I-225, and the drainage work at Logan.

Total cost of the highway work in the MIS was only $57 million.

But Owens had a plan to get the money CDOT needed to widen I-25. In November 1999, the state put the TRANS Bonds measure on the ballot to ask voters statewide for borrowing authority to issue up to $1.7 billion in bonds to accelerate work on up to 28 vital transportation corridors around the state, with the lion’s share of the money earmarked for T-REX.

The measure won, and CDOT was able to join RTD in a much larger project that added four full lanes south of Belleview and two lanes north of there and along I-225. It added to overall right-of-way costs for the wider building envelope.

So since CDOT’s budget ended up at $790 million, would critics say the costs ballooned 14-fold? Well, maybe they would, but they’d be wrong. The scope of work is what ballooned, and rightly so given the much safer and congestion-free segment of highway that resulted.

Now, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re going to be for or against a highway project or a transit line. What does matter is being straight about it either way.

In RTD’s case, at the end of the environmental impact study, the projected cost of the light rail project was $879 million. And that’s where it ended up – minus $3.7 million.

The final close-out of the project had the funds left over even after RTD spent some of the surplus on extra items after the project opened, including access to Park Meadows mall, three pedestrian bridges, and upgrades and art at stations.

T-REX Project Map

T-REX was a total $1.75 billion project done in partnership by RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation. The multimodal approach to widening Interstates 25 and 225 with 17 miles of new lanes and a big new interchange plus extending the light rail system for 19 miles was unique in the nation. Using a design-build method of contracting to speed up the process, contractors Kiewit and Parsons Transportation Group brought the project in 22 months ahead of the initial schedule.

The project extended along Interstate 25 and 225 between Broadway, Parker Road in Aurora and Lincoln Avenue in Douglas County. The initial budget of $1.67 billion grew not because of cost overruns or budget-busting, but because RTD, CDOT and third parties such as Denver, Greenwood Village and others including private developers paid for additional items they wanted built concurrently.

Among the items RTD added to the project with the budget surplus:

• Three pedestrian bridges
• Access to Park Meadows Mall
• Commissioned art at various stations
• Louisiana/Pearl Station plaza
• Power upgrades to the entire system
• New track crossover and tail track at Lincoln Station
• Power switches at the Southmoor Station
• Overhead Catenary System (OCS) overlaps
• Additional lightning protection for electrical equipment
• Additional safety barriers
• Dayton Station access to Boston St.
• Arapahoe Station plaza
• Dry Creek pedestrian bridge extension
• Nine Mile canopy

During the project, managers absorbed extra work while remaining on schedule. RTD’s budget at the start was $879 million, but added elements as extra funding became available to get up to the final total.

For instance, RTD landed a federal grant for $11.5 million for an electronic data system that was an upgrade to the initial project.

CDOT also added project element s into the project as it went along, successfully replacing the Colorado Boulevard and Hampden Avenue bridges over I-25 after it got a $15 million loan from the state Transportation Commission, since repaid. Those bridges hadn’t been included in the original [project because of a lack of funds.

Third parties that wanted enhancements also added to the total. Greenwood Village came up with $7.4 million for several upgrades, including better looking bridges and rail stations and a new design for the Arapahoe Station to lure development, and Denver paid $2.92 million to add a concrete plaza over the Louisiana-Pearl light-rail station, which is down at the highway level. A private developer paid to add two floors to the Lincoln Avenue end-of-line station.

Some of the add-ons were much smaller. The University of Denver paid $7,588 to have T-REX paint the school’s colors at the University light-rail station. And the Parliament Apartments, atop a hill at the I-225 interchange, paid $3,652 to lower the noise wall so it doesn’t obscure the brick sign and flagpoles advertising the complex.

Michael Penny

Many of the I-70 members are also involved in the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority (RMRA) which is nearing completion of a study showing that it is feasible to develop a high speed rail solution between DIA and the Eagle County Airport, as well as from Fort Collins to Pueblo. This was a very high level study, but one which will ultimately tie in with the I-70 Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. For those of you wondering about costs, we’re talking in the neighborhood of $15 billion for the DIA to Eagle County Airport route and more than $5 billion for the north-south route.

Several of our members have been working with the Colorado Department of Transportation to develop the final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. We hope to gain final approval on the PEIS by the Federal Government in 2011. Many of you are aware that the environment processes necessary to complete any major improvements along the corridor are extremely time consuming and costly. Beyond the final PEIS, the National Environmental Protection Act will require what are called Tier 2 studies for those projects along the corridor which are proposed for substantive improvements or changes. This means, while we may not like to hear it, many more years of studies. It is estimated the soonest we could really see substantive highway improvements moving forward is 2015 and any high speed rail solution would be around 2020. The hope is all the studies and debates will result in the best solution long-term for the Interstate corridor as well as for our local communities.

To that end, in 2010 the I-70 Coalition will begin to cull relevant documents for data which will allow the local communities to discus how to deal with the impacts of greater capacity within the corridor (regardless of how that capacity is created). Knowing how many additional people may be able to access Summit County on a daily basis with either a high-speed train solution or additional lanes is necessary for the communities and elected officials to determine what the social, economic and environmental issues may be, as well as what infrastructure and other legislative changes may be necessary to address those impacts.

Also on the 2010 work plan for the I-70 Coalition is to continue to push for funding for improvements along the corridor. It is clear that highway improvements will come first, both from a financial ability standpoint as well as environmental reviews. Locally, this means we’re looking for funding for projects like Highway 9 widening and the Silverthorne Interchange project. We’re also keeping our eyes on the big prize of the Federal Reauthorization for Transportation Financing and following anything the state might evaluate for I-70, such as tolling. 2010 is an election year, therefore we don’t expect much to happen with transportation financing or legislation under the dome. Regardless of the political landscape, it is clear to everyone that you can have the best laid plans, but without funding, they sit on the shelf. We are committed to not spending public funds completing studies which collect dust.

The last major public component of the 2010 work plan is actually our most focused, and we believe, most compelling given the years of NEPA work still ahead of us. Travel Demand Management (TDM) is going to be our prime focal point for 2010. The Coalition is currently working on a “one-stop” website which will provide information from a large number of other sites ranging from CDOT to the ski resorts. Our goal is to provide information to corridor users so that they may make informed and education decisions about their travel. We hope to be able to push this data to the users of the I-70 corridor using phone numbers and GPS data. Imagine having live weather, road conditions, road speeds, and slope conditions downloaded to your PDA automatically on one easy-to-understand site based upon your actual location. Right now the technology is still under development, and laws don’t allow us to do everything we desire, but ultimately, you might be able to get specific data pushed to you based upon your GPS location. This could lead to ski towns and resorts offering incentives and deals for those willing to stay a bit later and eating or staying overnight. It could allow local restaurants to notify those nearing their establishments of deals or menu lists.

TDM does not, however, stop with information and education, it also requires changes in alternatives and behavior to impact congestion on the corridor. Other project the Coalition is looking into are a compilation of all the TDM opportunities available along the corridor from van pooling and car sharing to special incentives to use multi-passenger vehicles and avoiding peak travel times on I-70. The Coalition will continue its focus on CDOT and State Patrol enforcement programs like requiring truck chain-up during winter season. The Coalition will also be exploring other programs to encourage I-70 travelers to utilize transit type options instead of single occupancy vehicles particularly during peak winter and summer travel times.

Michael Penny is town manager of Frisco and the chair of the I-70 coalition.

An environmental study identified the addition of one HOV/HOT lane in each direction as a core element in the first phase of improvements for the corridor, along with a parallel bikeway and upgrades to key interchanges.

The “managed lanes,” as they are called, would be reserved for carpools, buses and single-occupant vehicles that pay a toll, much like the HOT lanes that run from Pecos and U.S. 36 to downtown Denver near Coors Field.

Read the entire story at the Denver Post.