June 01, 2009 08:42 PM UTC

Denver Post Revisits Beltway

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• by: Colorado Pols

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.