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Ask questions before we break out the confetti

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Contributed by: Charles Baroch on 9/26/2007

Letter to the Editor for YourHub.com

The Northwest Parkway - the same toll road that predicted to investors it would meet traffic and revenue numbers that an official later admitted were overstated - now is celebrating a deal to lease the failing road to foreign operators for the next 99 years.

Perhaps we should ask a few questions before we break out the balloons and confetti.

· What mistakes put the Northwest Parkway in this bind in the first place and what can we learn from these blunders as we address Colorado's transportation challenges?

· Because the Northwest Parkway faced the very real possibility of defaulting on its bonds, what concessions was it forced to make to convince the private operators to bail it out? (The noncompete clause limiting future transportation improvements near the toll road - a provision that promoters neglected to mention when they excitedly announced the deal - offers one example.)

· What will the metro area look like and how will future generations be addressing transportation challenges when the Northwest Parkway finally reverts to public control in 99 years? (For purposes of comparison, Ford's Model T debuted 99 years ago.)

· What would be the impact on taxpayers of extending the toll road and does lengthening a highly unsuccessful toll road amount to throwing good money after bad? Because analyses show that toll revenue won't come close to covering the costs of a Northwest Parkway extension, would this be the best use of limited taxpayer funds when Colorado is facing a huge backlog of transportation projects statewide?

The City of Golden hasn't been the only one posing questions like these. The media, including Denver Post columnist Al Lewis and ColoradoConfidential.com , have been asking pointed questions about the Northwest Parkway since the deal was announced.

The fact is that such deals with foreign private investors are certainly no panacea. The Washington Post reported just this week that, despite a deal with foreign investors for tolled lanes on the Washington, D.C. beltway, government will need to contribute "$409 million in public money for work that state officials originally said would be paid for by the private firms building it."

A Northwest Parkway extension would need far more subsidies than that. It is flat wrong to suggest that toll roads don't need public financing.

You can be sure that the foreign corporations leasing the Northwest Parkway are focused on their profits, not what's best for Colorado drivers. The executives with these corporations are just doing their jobs. But it's the job of Colorado's elected officials to ask the tough questions and look out for the best interests of the state's residents.

Charles J. Baroch
Mayor, City of Golden

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