Beltway Boondoggle

The proposal to connect the Northwest Parkway to C-470 has residents of the western metro area asking: is it a Road to Nowhere, A Bridge Too Far, or a Lost Highway?

This latest pipe dream of beltway proponents comes from the failed Northwest Parkway which leased its operations to a foreign company. This foreign company, Brisa, promises two things: to raise tolls for the next 99 years for Coloradoans and to give a $100 million dollar payoff to the directors of the Northwest Parkway if they can complete the beltway.

Let me bring you up to speed. While I'm doing this, hum along to another famous song, "Won't Get Fooled Again."

When mayors and traffic engineers in the local governments of the Northwest Quadrant in Jefferson County met with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) in 2003, they asked for congestion relief. What they got was a beltway - even though CDOT's own figures showed there wasn't enough traffic to pay for it. Cost: $1.6 billion. So CDOT thought they would toll it, but found out tolls would only pay $600 million of the $1.6 billion.

But now that Brisa's in town, anything is possible. This foreign company wants our roads. They want to charge high tolls. Heck, they are already raising the tolls for the NW Parkway from $2 to $3, with more raises to come. And if they don't get enough toll revenues to satisfy their stockholders, then the NW Parkway directors have promised to let their roads parallel to the Parkway degrade, so that traffic will be forced to take the toll road.

And traffic analysis after traffic analysis has shown that there is just not enough traffic on SH-93 to justify turning it into a twelve lane elevated toll road (CDOT's toll road option) over the tiny town of Golden. The cost is prohibitive, financially and environmentally.

A few years back, proponents of the beltway gathered together the cities and county involved and convinced them to pay for a good traffic analysis. It found that instead of a beltway, four lanes on SH-93 and four lanes on McIntyre-Indiana would solve traffic congestion.

Why hasn't this happened? Governments much more powerful than tiny Golden really want a beltway and use their considerable political power to try and get it. Whenever Golden dares to speak up, they are tarred as uncooperative.

If Brisa gets the toll road it wants to complete the beltway, we can count on increased traffic congestion, more serious ozone violations, increased tolls, degraded side roads --and all of this for the next 99 years.

To give this perspective - what happed 99 years ago? Well, for one thing, Henry Ford unveiled his invention of the automobile. What will our transportation options be 99 years from now?

I think policymakers ought to be accountable. That means no 99 year contracts. It means not building an unnecessary vanity beltway. It means not selling our infrastructure to foreign companies - especially one like Brisa, who comes into the game with negative bond ratings. It means not guaranteeing foreign companies' profits at the expense of our citizens.

So don't let beltway proponents fool you. A beltway will not solve congestion and will probably worsen it.

It's a boondoggle with no accountability, built upon a failed foundation.

State Representative Gwyn Green

(D-Golden/Lakewood)