Toll Roads News.com reports that the the Northwest Parkway became the last toll road in Colorado to go cashless. As of 10 p.m. Dec 31, the beltway segment went cashless with all-electronic tolling. E-470 went cashless in the first half of 2009, and the last cash was collected July 3. I-25 HOT Lanes operated by CDOT have always been cashless.
Steve Bobrick, operations director at the Northwest Parkway, says the company laid off the two full-time collectors and a supervisor collector at year’s end. He says there were no hard feelings because they’d known for a long time that their jobs would end, and they received a decent severance package.
According to the article, Portuguese concessionaire Brisa, which operates Northwest Parkway, had a small operating net income but a substantial three-quarter loss for the year after counting debt service.
The Denver Post reports that backers and opponents squared off at a DRCOG hearing over the proposed Jefferson Parkway toll roa, calling it either a likely boondoggle that will do nothing to improve traffic safety and relieve congestion in northwest metro Denver or a vitally needed beltway link that will spur mobility, connectivity and commercial development in the area.
Broomfield, Arvada and Jefferson County set up the Jefferson County Public Highway Authority to lure a public-private partnership that would build a toll highway from Colorado 128 near the Interlocken commercial area to Colorado 93 near West 64th Avenue at the north edge of Golden.
The highway authority needs DRCOG’s board of directors to add the Jefferson Parkway to the council of governments’ regional transportation plan.
The Denver Business Journal reports that Wednesday’s public hearing on the last leg of Denver’s beltway is likely to draw a crowd. The issue is whether to include the 20-mile section between U.S. 36 through Golden and down to Interstate 70 in the region’s long-range transportation plan.
Getting a project included in the plan is a critical step among many that are needed to bring a proposal to reality.
But opponents are lining up against adding the initial phase of an estimated $203 million, 10-mile, private toll road dubbed the Jefferson Parkway. The first phase runs between between CO 93 and CO 128.
The Denver Regional Council of Governments will hold the public hearing at 7 p.m. in the Colorado History Museum Boettcher Auditorium, 1300 Broadway.
Go to the Denver Business Journal to see the entire article.
City of Golden Press Release
The city of Boulder, Boulder County, the City of Golden and the town of Superior have joined forces to oppose the current plan to build the Jefferson Parkway, warning taxpayers of the real cost the toll road would have on them.
Jefferson Parkway opponents have the opportunity to make their voices heard at a meeting with the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) on December 16. Public comment is encouraged as the DRCOG board decides whether or not to add the Jefferson Parkway to its regional transportation plan.
Fix93.org offers information about how to make a comment online or in person.
Jefferson Parkway backers are telling the public that private sector partners will pay for the proposed toll road. What they’re not revealing, however, is that their toll road would only work if taxpayers pay for close to $1 billion in additional road improvements around the toll road. These costs also would divert badly needed funds from other proposed regional or statewide transportation improvements.
The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority’s (JPPHA’s) application to be included in DRCOG’s regional transportation plan claims that it “will not require federal or state funding” and “requires no capital or operating funds from any public entity.”
However, plans to improve Highway 93 through Golden to C-470 are crucial for the success of the toll road. And the JPPHA has no intention of finding funding for these improvements. Its application states, “These improvements are assumed to be the responsibility of CDOT and/or area governments, and no funding or project commitment is available at this time.” That means an estimated cost of nearly $1 billion would fall on the backs of taxpayers.
Without these improvements, Jefferson Parkway traffic would be 60 to 80 percent below what the authority predicts, according to DRCOG traffic modeling. “For a toll road that’s supposed to be free to taxpayers, the Jefferson Parkway would be incredibly expensive,” said Golden Mayor Jacob Smith. “Given that the Jefferson Parkway will actually worsen traffic on almost all surrounding roads, it’s impossible to justify this expense.”
The city of Boulder, Boulder County, the city of Golden and the town of Superior have proposed making much-needed improvements to Highway 93 as an alternative to the Jefferson Parkway. Although it is a critical economic corridor, Highway 93 suffers from congestion and is dangerous, with its traffic fatality rate nearly double the state average for comparable roads.
The plan proposed by the four local governments would improve Highway 93’s safety and capacity, offering a boost to the clean energy research institutions in the area. For more information about the plan and to see maps of expected traffic increases as a result of the toll road, visit fix93.org.
The Dallas Morning News reports on efforts by the Texas Transportation Commission to build a new privately financed toll road in the Dallas area within the more restrictive rules set in the last session by the state Legislature.
The commission told its staff to submit plans by January for how to fast-track a roughly $4 billion expansion of Interstate 35E between Dallas and Denton. Officials say the project is a prime candidate for a new kind of financing that they concede looks a lot like the private toll deals ruled out by the Legislature.
“We’ve got to use all of these innovative ways of building highways or we won’t be building,” said commission member Ted Houghton of El Paso in an interview Friday. “It’s a fact of life. If you want us to build roads, then we are going to move forward using these kinds of tools.”
The tool in question is called pass-through toll financing, and is different, though not very, from the private toll deals lawmakers have put on ice.
Looking southwest over Indiana Street near the Rocky Flats site, the Jefferson Parkway toll road would go straight down the grassy space in the middle of the photo.
Officials from Golden and Boulder, the two cities connected by CO 93, told lawmakers on Wednesday that their $175 million plan to improve the hazardous stretch of road will improve safety and ease traffic congestion – results they say won’t be obtained from building the proposed Jefferson Parkway toll road.
They advocate intersection improvements including a grade separation at U.S. 6 and Heritage Road near the Jefferson County government center and U.S. 6 and 19th Street, plus shoulders and medians along CO 93. They claimed the Jefferson Parkway would worsen congestion in the northwest quadrant and do nothing to solve CO 93’s safety problems. Portions of the highway have accident rates twice the state average.
“Golden and Boulder feel they have to be proactive to come up with a transportation solution that works,” said John Putnam, an attorney representing Golden on transportation issues.
But after the meeting, the argument was joined by backers of the Jefferson Parkway, a $204 million proposed extension of the metro beltway that would run initially for about nine miles from Interlocken to CO 93 north of Golden.
“How could Jefferson Parkway add congestion to their streets if they say no one is going to use it?” said Kevin McCasky, a Jefferson County commissioner who is chair of the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority. “You can’t have it both ways. Is there a bunch of new traffic that’s just going to show up in neighborhoods?
Communities in the U.S. 36 corridor will bid for as much as $200 million in federal stimulus money to help extend high-occupancy vehicle/high-occupancy toll lanes on the highway from Pecos Street to Table Mesa Drive in Boulder, the Denver Post reports.
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.
Could $1.2 million from three local communities start a controversial highway project that $15 million from the Colorado Department of Transportation couldn’t? That`s the hope of elected officials in Broomfield, Arvada and Jefferson County, which each have given $400,000 to the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority, reports the Broomfield Enterprise.
Tens of thousands of Massachusetts Turnpike motorists have been socked with falsely inflated bills because the company that provided the transponders for the so-called Fast Lane system violated its multimillion-dollar contract by failing to inspect the system, a state audit has found. State Auditor Joseph DeNucci -who investigated the overcharges after a front-page Herald expose in February – found that Fast Lane provider TransCore failed to inspect transponder equipment over the past two years as mandated in its $11 million-a-year contract.
Texas’ top transportation official, the chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, forcefully defended the department’s pursuit of private toll roads in an unusually direct speech in Irving today, reports the transportation blog of the Dallas Morning News.
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