August 14, 2013 08:38 AM UTC

Don't Look Now, But FASTER Is Fixing The Bridges

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post's Monte Whaley reports:

Colorado's drivers face fewer dangerous bridges after a six-year push to replace old and crumbling crossings statewide.

As of July 31, the state has replaced 53 bridges while another 22 are under construction and 33 are in the design phase, Colorado Department of Transportation officials said Tuesday…

CDOT says the passage of the FASTER — Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery — legislation in March 2009, helped speed bridge repair and removal. The legislation created the Colorado Bridge Enterprise, which is a dedicated funding source for replacing poor-rated bridges.

The contentious fight over the FASTER vehicle registration fee increases, both during its passage in the Colorado legislature and afterwards as an electioneering battle cry for "Tea Party" Republicans, has faded from memory in recent months. We haven't seen any response from the Colorado Republican Party, or for that matter anybody on the right, to the Colorado Department of Transportation's press release yesterday. But it's worth remembering the massive fit the GOP pitched over the creation of a dedicated funding stream for bridge repairs, with just about every Republican running for office in 2010, from Scott McInnis to Walker Stapleton citing this "tax increase" as a reason to throw Democrats out. After 2010, some Republicans continued to grouse about FASTER, although the road construction lobby's tight relationship with GOP Speaker Frank McNulty ensured no serious effort to repeal FASTER would materialize in the GOP-controlled Colorado House.

Today, after a few minor hiccups, the estimated $100 million annually the FASTER legislation nets for repairing Colorado's aging bridges is making a real difference. Voters who have read about terrifying bridge collapses in other states deserve to know that in Colorado, we're doing what we can to maintain our infrastructure. Where the right wanted to use FASTER to stoke opposition to Democrats, today FASTER is an opportunity for Democrats to close the "value loop" for voters: to show them tangibly why public investments are worth making.