CO. mags - your favorite traffic problem discussed....

[Benny Profane]

January 25, 2006
Clogged Rockies Highway Divides Coloradans

By KIRK JOHNSON
SILVERTHORNE, Colo., Jan. 22 - When Interstate 70 was built through here in the 1960's and 70's, the Colorado Rockies were largely rural and remote, and the old roads that the highway replaced were a widely recognized danger.

Over the years, as the population grew, delays and frustrations on the highway began to mount. Traffic jams at nosebleed altitude became common. In 8,800-foot-high Silverthorne, which was little more than a gas station pit stop a generation ago, with a grocery that got fresh produce only on Thursdays, alpine meadows gave way to factory outlet stores.

Now state officials are considering a major and contentious widening project for Interstate 70 that is dividing people over the question of who the highway is for and how it transformed these mountains.

The project is a variation of a drama that is playing out across much of the West as once-rural outposts are transformed into brimming settlements with newfound political and economic clout in transportation decisions.

As the Federal Highway Act of 1956 established the Interstate System and helped open vast expanses of the West, highways like Interstate 70 changed just about everything by putting on the map distant places that had been mostly untouched.

Now, the very places that were changed, like Silverthorne - 65 miles west of Denver - are wading in as aggressive and muscular participants in discussions about what comes next.

In Nevada, the expansion U.S. 95 connecting Las Vegas and its sprawling western suburbs has resumed after environmentalists settled a lawsuit last year over the effect of increased vehicle emissions on nearby residents.

The proposed Legacy Highway in Utah, extending south of Salt Lake City, was blocked for years before receiving final approval this month.

Elsewhere in Colorado, a plan for a toll road across the once-empty plains east of Denver was put on hold last year after opposition from residents.

Transportation experts, politicians and residents agree that the stakes and implications of these fights are enormous, touching on tenets of the West that are scriptural: unbridled growth, local identity, civic autonomy and an uneasy dependence on government.

Here in Colorado, where Interstate 70 is crucial to the tourism economy and the state's image as the mountain playground of the West, businesses, residents and interest groups do not remotely agree on what to do.

"The question is, How much do we really want to improve I-70 - and do we want to improve it so much that it changes the character of our communities?" said Gary Severson, the executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. "That's the tightrope."

The idea that transportation systems can reshape the regions through which they pass is well established. As far back as the Erie Canal and the transcontinental railroad, geographers and historians say that getting from Point A to Point B has always been at least partly about property values, boosterism and the restless American impulse to move on and create anew.

But that pattern is being given a decidedly new twist here on a road that was hailed and agonized over as one of the most daunting stretches of the Interstate System.

Places like Silverthorne - incorporated in 1967, when it was populated mainly by highway construction workers - have become destinations for shopping or homebuilding and tend to favor an expansion of the highway that would deliver more of the bounty that Interstate 70 has already bestowed. Towns closer to Denver, like Idaho Springs, which have not seen the influx of vacation homes or tourists and which also have many more commuters to Denver, say mass transit must be on the table.

Some politicians and residents say that doing nothing may be the wisest course. Colorado's population in and out of the mountains is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next 20 years, pushing people toward mass transit as traffic congestion worsens.

Not everything that has happened here is a result of transportation, of course. The explosion of population and the economy since the completion of Interstate 70's last leg in 1979 - the second tube of the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel at 11,000 feet across the Continental Divide - also coincided with a demographic transformation as members of the post-World War II generation reached their peak earning years, stock and real estate markets boomed and changes in tax law made buying vacation real estate more attractive.

Resorts that opened or grew during the highway's early years - like Vail, in 1962, Keystone in 1970 and Beaver Creek in 1980 - have moved toward year-round operations and real-estate development that bring more visitors and residents.

The results have all fed back into the equation of traffic, which is increasingly bumper-to-bumper on weekends in winter and summer. Another record was set last year for the number of cars trying to squeeze through the four lanes of the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel in one month - just over 37,000 a day, last July.

Issues of class and clout have further clouded the picture.

Summit County, where Silverthorne is located, was one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation in the 1990's, with the population up 83 percent. Equally important, many residents and politicians say, is that the nine counties along the Interstate 70 corridor - led by Summit and Eagle, where the big resorts and the biggest waves of homebuilding are concentrated - are becoming more and more important to the state's economy.

In 2000, a private study commissioned by the state found that the corridor produced about $2 billion in recreation revenue, out of $9.3 billion statewide, and generated $136 million in state and local tax revenues.

"Do we accommodate growth, or do we stifle it? That is the question," said Lou DelPiccolo, Silverthorne's mayor, who favors a highway widening plan.

Thirty miles east, in Clear Creek County, where the growth has been slower and the big payoff from the highway never quite materialized, political leaders like the Idaho Springs mayor, Dennis Lunbery, are asking the opposite question: Could they survive the widening of the highway?

Idaho Springs, confined in a narrow canyon - the back door of City Hall is less than 100 feet from the Interstate's westbound guardrail - would be destroyed, Mr. Lunbery said, by the miasma of asphalt, noise and dust that a bigger highway, and the years of construction, would bring.

Mr. Lunbery said he thought that the state, in its environmental assessment of the corridor, had "stacked the deck" toward a highway-widening option by excluding any plan that costs more than $4 billion. Most mass transit proposals would add at least another $2 billion to $4 billion.

Coincidentally or not, widening is what the destination communities farther west mostly want. Many people farther west also worry that a mass transit rail line, however good it may be for closer-in communities like Idaho Springs, could turn resort communities into bedroom communities, full of commuters catching the train to their offices in Denver.

The executive director of the State Department of Transportation, Thomas E. Norton, who is expected to make a decision on the corridor later this year, said he was open to all options.

"I don't think there is a bias in my perspective," Mr. Norton said. "There is a bias toward best use of the public dollar, and until you can get really high transit kinds of usage, the economics are not there. Rail that can move 10,000 people an hour looks great, but if only 12 days of the year it would be used by that many people, it's not an efficient use of dollars."

Many people, including Mr. Lunbery, who expects the state's study to be challenged in court almost no matter what happens, think that nothing will happen for years on the corridor - partly because of the difficulty in finding the money - and that worsening traffic is, for now, the only certainty.

Gary Lindstrom thinks that is a good thing. He is a legislator in the Colorado House whose district includes much of the corridor. He is also a Democratic candidate for governor this year and favors the mass transit idea, but he agrees with Mr. Norton that for now it does not appear feasible. Time will change that equation, Mr. Lindstrom said.

"The worst thing we can do is widen the highway," he said. "We need to keep the congestion so people will be interested in the transit."

No matter what unfolds, Linda Wellington and her husband, Bill, who have lived all their lives here, will probably not see it. Ms. Wellington has watched it all - the good and the bad - and often talked it over with her father, a career highway worker, before he died, who regularly plowed the highest passes of the old road before Interstate 70 was built.

"At one time I was bitter. I'd say, 'Dad, don't you hate all the people and the traffic?' and he'd say, 'We need to move forward,' " said Ms. Wellington, who is in her 50's. "So that's where I am now. You can't stop it. It's here, we've built it, and you can't close the door."

The Wellingtons are planning to move. Mr. Wellington, who is 56, said he had been looking at a place in northeastern Colorado, out on the plains toward Kansas, where it is not as crowded as the mountains have become and where their son now lives. He will hate to leave, he said, but things have changed too much to stay.

[FrankZappa]

If it's widened, it'll just become obsolete shortly after it's done. Just like last time (US 6 to I-70 jammed was 1970 ish til 1988 ish) Whoopie! Not even 20 yrs.
After spending much of my life between Silver Plume & Bakerville I moved away 'cause I couldn't deal with the drive from Loveland to Bakerville (7 I-70 miles sometimes = 45 min to 1 hr). Plus having to re-schedule your life around the traffic at different times of the day/week. I still own a cabin there but rarely use it mostly because of what that Damn Interstate's like - Not just traffic but all the noise & pollution spewed by it 24 hrs a day.
Life's much better now...where 4 cars at the stop sign constitutes rush hour.

[smmokan]

That would be one hell of an engineering feat- widening the highway (to 3 or 4 lanes each way?) without disrupting the current traffic.

Personally, I think they should put in an HOV lane- westbound in the mornings, eastbound in the afternoons.

[Yossarian]

There's actually only one obvious, correct answer to this, which will make everyone happy except the consumers themselves, and will therefore only happen when the consumers' displeasure with the solution is less than their annoyance by being stuck in traffic for 4 hours, which should be within a few more years.

This solution appeals to both the libs and conservs, the enviros and the businesspeeps.

It is a toll.

A time-modulated toll which gives financial disincentive to drive a car during the peak hours, leaves it free or cheap to drive during off-peak hours, is graduated on a zone travel basis - free for local traffic within zone and with exemptions for resident commuters from mountain towns, and highest for users going into or out of the Mountain Recreation Area, which would begin just past Idaho Springs before the exit to highway 40 and end around Eagle to make it "fair" for all the resorts - and can be avoided by making use of a rush-hour-single-direction (as Lloyd says) new energy-efficient-multiple-car-ala-catapillar-bus dedicated lane, which would be paid for by the toll moneys collected.

At least, that's what Cornholio and I came up with.
Interestingly, I actually know someone high up in a non-partisan non-profit policy analysis group. So, the idea may get out there eventually.

[Yossarian]

Oh yeah, and it would use the newest EZPass toll system that allows drivers to only have to slow down to ~40-50mph and electronically collects the toll from the RF (or whatever it is) device in the car which is linked to the user account, with online billing of course.

EDIT: and of course, with the toll in place, it would create an actual incentive to put more people in each car, further reducing the number of cars on the road.

[lemon boy]

I've been 70'd twice this year after going for probably 5 w/o. No worse than usual just different situ- this year a bit on my end.

70 is pretty easy to manage in the winter in general but the summer is a real clusterfuck.

My preferred solution (similar to 70 & 25 in town in part) is a second deck for additional traffic not wider.

Additionally, I think it is time for CO to regain some pride (and guinness book position) by constructing a subway tunnel from Denver (three feeder branches S, N & DIA/Downtown) through the major resort areas all the way to glenwood

[Yossarian]

Yeah, I love the train idea, works in the Alps, works in lots of places, but that option was the one at the high end of the $2-$4B if I recall, and it got shot down pretty quickly, if memory serves.

[homerjay]

I've been to some meetings with CDOT due to my work and their preferrred alternative is (if I can remember correctly):

- Selective widening which will include a third tunnel bore thru the Ike. Additional lanes probably all the way up Georgetown Hill.
- A tunnel thru Floyd Hill was also discussed.
- An additional accel lane up Vail Pass.
- A tunnel thru Dowd Canyon (one of the most dangerous sections of road).
- A bus "guideway" down the middle of the highway from Morrison to Vail, perhaps beyond.

CDOT owns on average about 120ft of right of way, and acquisition of ROW alone is astronomically expensive. It'll be interesting to see what happens with things.

Zappa's right in that by the time it's widened, it'll be obsolete.

[Stu Gotz]

It is a toll. A time-modulated toll

New York's Port Authority keeps kicking this around for its bridges and tunnels. Never seems to get much traction, although it does seem like a good way to spread traffic out over the course of the day.

And I do love me some EZ Pass.

[board]

I love the toll idea Yoss ! let the road stay as it is and allow people to decide how much time and money they are willing to spend. Widening only leads to more and more widening it is never a final solution.

btw nice article from the NYT Benny. just more self important posturing from effete east coast elite liberals. Man you guy's are predictable

[bklyn]

A train would eliminate a bunch of tourist traffic.

[Danno]

homerjay, what is Dowd Canyon, not familiar with that name...

I don't get why CDOT would want to add a lane to Vail Pass, the problem pretty much ends at Breckenridge...

I would love a train, but only if it is part of a complete transportation package (ie great/easy park and rides, and great transport options from the I-70 corridor to resorts and around towns. For example, will the train only help the day skier? WHat about someone who wants to spend the weekend in the mountains? Will there be enough public transport to make a train a viable option?

You know, I used to think the train was the solution, but I don't think so anymore. In the winter, maybe, but winter traffic is easier to deal with and more predictable. As most people around here know, traffic is actually way worse in the summer, and less predictable. I don't know how a train would help me in the summer, it might take me to Frisco, but it wouldn't take me to the mountain biking TH, or to my camping spot.

I think some of the options hear (double decker, HOV lane, toll, etc) with some public transport options like bus lanes, might be the best solution...

[TeleHoar]

First thing they could do...costs nothing...
Restrict the semi's from traveling up the hills on Fri night and Sat morn. and from going down to Denver on Sunday.
Pain in the ass for interstate commerce yes. but would alleviate a lot of congestion during peak times.
One slow truck causes miles of back ups that never recover during a peak times.

[Danno]

A train would eliminate a bunch of tourist traffic.

tourist traffic isn't really the problem, it's the hordes of us front rangers that is the problem...

[lemon boy]

TH- a couple of flaws:

1. The truckers contend that is the 4wheelers slowing them down
2. It assumes that dumbshits in cars/suv's would be any less stupid w/o the trucks

[Son1cdeth]

Good read Benny, thanks for posting that up. I know it's always a hot issue up in Summit whenever it gets brought up.

A very interesting thought on the tollway Yoss, suprised that hasn't been mentioned in more detail by now. That is definitely the best toll-lane option I've heard.


Another option that I read a few weeks ago is another highway all together. The idea that they ran with was expanding 285 all the way through Fairplay, then tunning under the divide and popping out somewhere between Breck and Frisco, joining i-70 (the current highway 9 route).

Widening the current mess is definitely not the answer, as already mentioned, by the time they're done we'll be back in the same boat.

[Danno]

First thing they could do...costs nothing...
Restrict the semi's from traveling up the hills on Fri night and Sat morn. and from going down to Denver on Sunday.

I'm curious, this is the second or third comment I have seen in the last week about Friday night traffic. Do y'all see Friday night traffic? Because I drive up to the mountains just about every Friday night in the winter, and probably half of the weekends the rest of the year, and I never hit anything that I would call real traffic. Maybe a slight slowdown here or there, every now and then, but generally it is smooth sailing. Am I just leaving later, ie is there Friday traffic and I am just missing it?

[homerjay]

http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/download...c/monorail.mp3

Danno, Dowd Canyon is betw. West Vail and the Minturn exit. Rollover accidents nearly every single day with bad weather. Plus, there's no frontage road through there which can be dangeroso for emergency vehicle responses in the event that 70 is jammed. Adding a lane to Vail Pass would actually be one of the more constructable portions of the project since ROW acquisition wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue (CDOT has enough and what they don't have would be Forest Service).

Population projections have Eagle County hitting 100,000 people by 2030, those lanes will be needed then.

[Mybad!]

First thing they could do...costs nothing...
Restrict the semi's from traveling up the hills on Fri night and Sat morn. and from going down to Denver on Sunday.
Pain in the ass for interstate commerce yes. but would alleviate a lot of congestion during peak times.
One slow truck causes miles of back ups that never recover during a peak times.

Commerce would never go for that. Possibly screw up the economy in some areas in favor of letting a bunch of people ski who are going to ski anyway no matter what the traffic is like? I like the train idea. Expensive but worth it in the long run. Local transportation would have to be wired down tight though in order for it to work. You can't be riding the Summit Stage for 1 1/2 hours to get from Keystone to Breck, needs to be shorter.

[Danno]

oh, yeah, that is a gnarly stretch of road, just didn't know the name, thanks.

You bring up an interesting point with the frontage roads. Some of these problems could be somewhat alleviated if there was a continuous frontage road. The fact that there is none between Silver Plume and Georgetown, Bakerville and Loveland, and the aforementioned canyone really fuck things up.

[smitchell333]

First thing they could do...costs nothing...
Restrict the semi's from traveling up the hills on Fri night and Sat morn. and from going down to Denver on Sunday.
Pain in the ass for interstate commerce yes. but would alleviate a lot of congestion during peak times.
One slow truck causes miles of back ups that never recover during a peak times.

I like this idea and have pontificated on it before - really the restrictions just need to be 7-9am and 3-4 pm Sat/Sun - although realistically its probably a non-starter b/c of the big money involved in shipping interests.

In the US we're so shortsighted on these train options - even though the useful life is 30+ years vs 5-10 yrs on highways we just look at the shortrun cost and say its too expensive. Once you factor in gasoline and related automotive costs cars are way more expensive option. Over the long run they pay off big time - and just like the light rail in Denver the usage estimates are always lower than the actual #s.

[homerjay]

I like this topic as it's near and dear to me....

good info here http://www.i70mtncorridor.com/default.asp

check out this powerpoint if you get a chance

http://www.i70mtncorridor.com/PresMa...esentation.pdf

[Steven S. Dallas]

Don't feed the tolls!

Edit: why in God's name would you re-post the entire article? (for Kids are All Right)

[bubba-k]

As far as the frontage road idea I don't like it! I grew up in Idaho Springs and there is nothing I hate more then when I need to get to work or whatever and out of towners are cloggin up good old stanley road. The clear creek county sherrif's departments has actually considered making that frontage road for locals only, and by that I mean no thru traffic. Either way it is a mess, and unfortunately right now no option seems to have the right mix of effectiveness and cost. It'll be interesting to see what happens, lets just hope the parents hang onto that old victorian a little longer until prices skyrocket some more, then leave that blasted traffic-fest.

[The Kids Are Alright]

January 25, 2006
Clogged Rockies Highway Divides Coloradans

By KIRK JOHNSON
SILVERTHORNE, Colo., Jan. 22 - When Interstate 70 was built through here in the 1960's and 70's, the Colorado Rockies were largely rural and remote, and the old roads that the highway replaced were a widely recognized danger.

Over the years, as the population grew, delays and frustrations on the highway began to mount. Traffic jams at nosebleed altitude became common. In 8,800-foot-high Silverthorne, which was little more than a gas station pit stop a generation ago, with a grocery that got fresh produce only on Thursdays, alpine meadows gave way to factory outlet stores.

Now state officials are considering a major and contentious widening project for Interstate 70 that is dividing people over the question of who the highway is for and how it transformed these mountains.

The project is a variation of a drama that is playing out across much of the West as once-rural outposts are transformed into brimming settlements with newfound political and economic clout in transportation decisions.

As the Federal Highway Act of 1956 established the Interstate System and helped open vast expanses of the West, highways like Interstate 70 changed just about everything by putting on the map distant places that had been mostly untouched.

Now, the very places that were changed, like Silverthorne - 65 miles west of Denver - are wading in as aggressive and muscular participants in discussions about what comes next.

In Nevada, the expansion U.S. 95 connecting Las Vegas and its sprawling western suburbs has resumed after environmentalists settled a lawsuit last year over the effect of increased vehicle emissions on nearby residents.

The proposed Legacy Highway in Utah, extending south of Salt Lake City, was blocked for years before receiving final approval this month.

Elsewhere in Colorado, a plan for a toll road across the once-empty plains east of Denver was put on hold last year after opposition from residents.

Transportation experts, politicians and residents agree that the stakes and implications of these fights are enormous, touching on tenets of the West that are scriptural: unbridled growth, local identity, civic autonomy and an uneasy dependence on government.

Here in Colorado, where Interstate 70 is crucial to the tourism economy and the state's image as the mountain playground of the West, businesses, residents and interest groups do not remotely agree on what to do.

"The question is, How much do we really want to improve I-70 - and do we want to improve it so much that it changes the character of our communities?" said Gary Severson, the executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. "That's the tightrope."

The idea that transportation systems can reshape the regions through which they pass is well established. As far back as the Erie Canal and the transcontinental railroad, geographers and historians say that getting from Point A to Point B has always been at least partly about property values, boosterism and the restless American impulse to move on and create anew.

But that pattern is being given a decidedly new twist here on a road that was hailed and agonized over as one of the most daunting stretches of the Interstate System.

Places like Silverthorne - incorporated in 1967, when it was populated mainly by highway construction workers - have become destinations for shopping or homebuilding and tend to favor an expansion of the highway that would deliver more of the bounty that Interstate 70 has already bestowed. Towns closer to Denver, like Idaho Springs, which have not seen the influx of vacation homes or tourists and which also have many more commuters to Denver, say mass transit must be on the table.

Some politicians and residents say that doing nothing may be the wisest course. Colorado's population in and out of the mountains is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next 20 years, pushing people toward mass transit as traffic congestion worsens.

Not everything that has happened here is a result of transportation, of course. The explosion of population and the economy since the completion of Interstate 70's last leg in 1979 - the second tube of the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel at 11,000 feet across the Continental Divide - also coincided with a demographic transformation as members of the post-World War II generation reached their peak earning years, stock and real estate markets boomed and changes in tax law made buying vacation real estate more attractive.

Resorts that opened or grew during the highway's early years - like Vail, in 1962, Keystone in 1970 and Beaver Creek in 1980 - have moved toward year-round operations and real-estate development that bring more visitors and residents.

The results have all fed back into the equation of traffic, which is increasingly bumper-to-bumper on weekends in winter and summer. Another record was set last year for the number of cars trying to squeeze through the four lanes of the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel in one month - just over 37,000 a day, last July.

Issues of class and clout have further clouded the picture.

Summit County, where Silverthorne is located, was one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation in the 1990's, with the population up 83 percent. Equally important, many residents and politicians say, is that the nine counties along the Interstate 70 corridor - led by Summit and Eagle, where the big resorts and the biggest waves of homebuilding are concentrated - are becoming more and more important to the state's economy.

In 2000, a private study commissioned by the state found that the corridor produced about $2 billion in recreation revenue, out of $9.3 billion statewide, and generated $136 million in state and local tax revenues.

"Do we accommodate growth, or do we stifle it? That is the question," said Lou DelPiccolo, Silverthorne's mayor, who favors a highway widening plan.

Thirty miles east, in Clear Creek County, where the growth has been slower and the big payoff from the highway never quite materialized, political leaders like the Idaho Springs mayor, Dennis Lunbery, are asking the opposite question: Could they survive the widening of the highway?

Idaho Springs, confined in a narrow canyon - the back door of City Hall is less than 100 feet from the Interstate's westbound guardrail - would be destroyed, Mr. Lunbery said, by the miasma of asphalt, noise and dust that a bigger highway, and the years of construction, would bring.

Mr. Lunbery said he thought that the state, in its environmental assessment of the corridor, had "stacked the deck" toward a highway-widening option by excluding any plan that costs more than $4 billion. Most mass transit proposals would add at least another $2 billion to $4 billion.

Coincidentally or not, widening is what the destination communities farther west mostly want. Many people farther west also worry that a mass transit rail line, however good it may be for closer-in communities like Idaho Springs, could turn resort communities into bedroom communities, full of commuters catching the train to their offices in Denver.

The executive director of the State Department of Transportation, Thomas E. Norton, who is expected to make a decision on the corridor later this year, said he was open to all options.

"I don't think there is a bias in my perspective," Mr. Norton said. "There is a bias toward best use of the public dollar, and until you can get really high transit kinds of usage, the economics are not there. Rail that can move 10,000 people an hour looks great, but if only 12 days of the year it would be used by that many people, it's not an efficient use of dollars."

Many people, including Mr. Lunbery, who expects the state's study to be challenged in court almost no matter what happens, think that nothing will happen for years on the corridor - partly because of the difficulty in finding the money - and that worsening traffic is, for now, the only certainty.

Gary Lindstrom thinks that is a good thing. He is a legislator in the Colorado House whose district includes much of the corridor. He is also a Democratic candidate for governor this year and favors the mass transit idea, but he agrees with Mr. Norton that for now it does not appear feasible. Time will change that equation, Mr. Lindstrom said.

"The worst thing we can do is widen the highway," he said. "We need to keep the congestion so people will be interested in the transit."

No matter what unfolds, Linda Wellington and her husband, Bill, who have lived all their lives here, will probably not see it. Ms. Wellington has watched it all - the good and the bad - and often talked it over with her father, a career highway worker, before he died, who regularly plowed the highest passes of the old road before Interstate 70 was built.

"At one time I was bitter. I'd say, 'Dad, don't you hate all the people and the traffic?' and he'd say, 'We need to move forward,' " said Ms. Wellington, who is in her 50's. "So that's where I am now. You can't stop it. It's here, we've built it, and you can't close the door."

The Wellingtons are planning to move. Mr. Wellington, who is 56, said he had been looking at a place in northeastern Colorado, out on the plains toward Kansas, where it is not as crowded as the mountains have become and where their son now lives. He will hate to leave, he said, but things have changed too much to stay.

great read.........thanks......I really like the idea of a train.........every year I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that passes through..............its only getting worse............