From Sunday’s Denver Post:
Former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm drove a stake through its heart. Voters in three counties shot it down. When it lingered on life support, the state Transportation Department pulled the plug.
But every time a plan to build a Jefferson County toll road flatlines, someone – or something – is there to resuscitate it.
“I think the power of real estate and those that prosper from real estate is why this (road) never dies. They won’t take no for an answer,” Lamm said.
The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority, composed of representatives from Jefferson County, Arvada and Broomfield, is the latest group to propose a toll road that would connect Colorado 128 on the north near Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport to Colorado 93 at West 64th Avenue. Regional arteries would link the toll road to the Northwest Parkway. In the south, the tollway would feed into Colorado 93, a two-lane road.
The project faces significant hurdles, not the least of which is obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in private financing to build it. Yet, while traffic congestion is a significant problem in parts of Jefferson County, especially in Arvada, no study has ever shown that this toll road will remedy the problem. Even so, authority members, who have sunk $900,000 of taxpayer money into the endeavor, say it will.
“It’s common sense,” says Jefferson County Commissioner Kevin McCasky, chairman of the authority…
…Bill Ray, the authority’s interim director, said officials are finishing conversations this month with companies interested in building the toll road. And McCasky projected the authority would have a partner finalized by mid-fall. Construction could begin in 18 months.
But there are some potential roadblocks. Landing private financing is not easy in difficult economic times, and if a company looks toward the Northwest Parkway as an indicator, it may have second thoughts.
Northwest Parkway never got the traffic and revenue predicted, so it was leased to foreign companies for 99 years. High gas prices, a shaky economy and toll increases have resulted in a 3 percent decrease in average daily traffic volume from two years ago.
And then there’s Golden. The city has dug in its heels. And it has offered $10,000 for an independent expert to review its study at the request of any neighboring city or person involved in the toll road.
So far, there’s no takers.
Beltway proponents have been saying for years that they are close to a solution, but it’s really hard to see where they are going to find money to build the mythical road.
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This beltway project is like a zombie that just won’t die! I mean really, is there no way to kill this thing?
That was never alive to begin with. The beltway is always just talk — it has never been close to becoming reality.
Someone needs to convince me jeffco is broke. If this “authority” can spend our money like there’s no tomorrow we must have a ton.
Meantime, what happened to the exodus of JCSD deputies fleeing to better heeled departments? We were told pension funding had to be cut because of lack of money.
This is a highway betting on the come and politicians will benefit greatly from it I am sure. Voters need to bring the commission into check and show them who they work for.
Someone needs to convince me jeffco is broke. If this “authority” can spend our money like there’s no tomorrow we must have a ton.
I agree with your sentence here, “convinceme”. It says it all.
We voters voted against this tollway years ago…obvioulsy, there is big money out there that stands to have even MORE big money … how can they go ahead and do this when we have voted against it? Oh, I guess that’s easy to explain…look at what Ritter (and Owens) did to the senior and disabled veterans property tax exemption!
They could care less about what WE want! And why does McCaskey want this toll road so much? Aha! He must have a significant amount into this ‘project.’