The Denver area's toll beltway is rolling west with three major developments, going counter-clockwise:
(1) At the beginning of this year the E-470 Public Highway Authority opened the final section of its road making the connection to I-25 north from Denver Int Airport. (2) By October or November this year the Northwest Parkway will extend the circumferential route another 15km (9mi) to Broomfield near US-36. (3) This April the state and three local jurisdictions in the west of the area announced an agreement to do the permitting and route selection (EIS) for a final 35km (22mi) segment from Broomfield to I-70/C-470 in Golden... MORE, MUCH MORE
The Denver area's toll beltway is rolling west with three major developments, going counter-clockwise:
(1) At the beginning of this year the E-470 Public Highway Authority opened the final section of its road making the connection to I-25 north from Denver Int Airport.
(2) By October or November this year the Northwest Parkway will extend the circumferential route another 15km (9mi) to Broomfield near US-36.
(3) This April the state and three local jurisdictions in the west of the area announced an agreement to do the permitting and route selection (EIS) for a final 35km (22mi) segment from Broomfield to I-70/C-470 in Golden.
Denver's 470 Beltway is a road declared "dead" many times, and by the highest officials. Richard D. Lamm, a 12-year governor of the state was first elected on a environmentally "progressive" platform. Lamm promised in 1974 to "drive a silver stake through I-470." And soon after he was first elected, May 1975, Gov Lamm ordered all planning work on the 470 beltway suspended. Federal environmental officials have opposed 470 since the early 1970s, repeatedly putting obstacles in its way. So strong was their opposition it was one of the earliest interstate delistings.
But like a great Christian of 2,000 years ago, or Graucho Marx after his premature obit, a good road usually finds ways to rise again. Gov Lamm's 1975 silver stake failed to kill!
470 is now 42km (26mi) of freeway in the southeast named C-470 (C denoting construction by the state of Colorado) and 76km (47mi) of E-470 tollroad, or a total of 118km (73mi) of 2x2-lane motorway in use. By the end of the year with the Northwest Parkway it will be a total of 132km (82mi), and about four-fifths of the full circle.
The final section of the beltway is being described some places as the Jefferson Parkway after the county in which it is located. Elsewhere it is called W-470, to contrast with the E-470 on the eastern side of the metro area (though some say the E was for Extension.) W-470 will be a toll project with financing under the Colorado Tolling Enterprise (CTE), the tolling arm of the state department of transport established last October, officials say - approximately a $500m project.
Strongest opposition to the road recently has come mostly from the city of Golden, a pretty little town nestled on the edge of the Rockies Front Range. Golden is not a party to the recent agreement to proceed to route selection and permiting. About 8km (5mi) of the likely right-of-way of W-470 is within the limits of the city of Golden. State officials say they hope Golden city will come to accept the inevitability of the W-470, and cooperate in the route selection. They say that if it comes to the crunch the state can use its legal powers of eminent domain to over-ride city opposition and get the road built through the city. Otherwise it might build the tollroad to the city line, and let it suffer the aggravation of high traffic volumes clogging surface arterials.
Colorado state DOT is commissioning the environmental impact statement (EIS) work within weeks. Though the city of Golden is so far hanging outside the process, the county in which it is located, Jefferson County, neighboring cities Arvada and Broomfield, and the Northwest Parkway joined with the state in an agreement to do the study and to jointly accept its recommendations. A deadline of 2005 has been set for permitting to be completed. State Governor Bill Owens announced the agreement April 15 (Press release 2003-04-15) saying it allows the state to proceed with the planning. Jefferson County Commissioner Michelle Lawrence said she hoped a ribbon cutting could occur before the end of the decade - by 2009.
A survey of Golden residents showed only 32% behind the city council's opposition to the road. A clear majority (63%) of Golden residents support construction of the road. (Telephone Survey Results, C
ity of Golden p5) However more active and outspoken opponents often exercise more political muscle than the silent majority. Back in 1987 a W-470 Public Highway Authority was formed by seven cities and two counties and officially chartered by the state in May 1988 to issue revenue bonds and build a tollroad. It started studies and permitting and some land for right of way was acquired. But it ran into legal challenges and couldn't raise money as opponents gained the upper hand. The board of the authority voted July 1992 not to meet again, though it was never officially disbanded. It just became inactive.
Support for the road has gradually grown again in the past few years, as traffic has grown and based on the success and popularity of the E-470 tollway on the other side of the metro area.
"Completion of the regional beltway system" – meaning W-470 – is mentioned as a priority in the 2020 regional plan document of the Denver Region Council of Governments. However this time the various local governments have moved to get the state involved. Locally formed public highway authorities can only move with unanimity in Colorado, allowing any one jurisdiction to halt a project. With the state taking the lead, only it can stop the process.
Two routes
One opposition group called CINQ (CItizens of the Northwest Quadrant) attacking the W-470 uses most of the familiar anti-road arguments: in particular that new capacity somehow spawns vast new traffic, illustrating the supposed insatiable demand with silly cartoons of I-25 still crowded at 72-lanes width. And it then makes the logically opposite point that the tollroad may be financially risky – that low traffic could leave taxpayers in the lurch for bond payments. (They apparently haven't heard of non-recourse revenue-bonds!)
But the group does raise an important question about the route and whether it needs to go through Golden. The route through Golden involves an 8km (5mi) jog due west from Broomfield to get to the westside of the Rocky Flats DOE atomic energy site. It is a 12km (7.5mi) longer route than one that goes more directly south, going east of Rocky Flats to join I-70 at the CO-58 interchange. The shorter route known as the Indiana Street alignment would co-locate the Beltway route and I-70 for 8km (5mi) to the C-470 interchange south of Golden. This I-70/W-470 would require extra lanes.
CINQ claims the longer westerly route is being pushed to serve the interests of development to the west, in particular a large Jefferson Center. Except for those who want to hamstring development, that is not in itself a negative. However it is another matter whether the greater cost of a longer route is justified by the extra people served. The need for general north-south connectivity along the Denver area's western fringe might be served just as well by the shorter easterly route avoiding Golden. This route would also serve CBD-destined traffic better than the westerly route, which is located on the fringe of Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, with no development to its west.
The big problem with the eastern alignment is the lack of any reservation and expensive Arvada property in the way. The state seems set on the westerly route but the eastern Arvada one remains a useful fallback. Parts of the western alignment are likely to be expensive to build, and the $500m cost number being put about seems very low if there are to be some nice environmental mitigation measures such as undergrounding parts of the road and overlapping others to minimize steep hillside cuts. A billion dollars seems more likely.
Northwest Parkway on track
The Northwest Parkway (NWP) is due for an early completion by late October or early December, according to Steve Hogan executive-director. The design-build contract provided for completion by the end of the year. NWP is a 18km (11mi) segment of the area's 470 beltway continuing on, counter-clockwise from the end of E-470 at I-25-North. The motorway standard segment terminates for now at 96th Street about 3km (1.7mi) short of the next main radial out of Denver – US-36, the Denver-Boulder Turnpike (detolled).
Hogan says his organization has spent some $12m upgrading to 4-lanes divided the surface arterial through the industrial parks and malls between 96th St and US-36, but it was unable to fund construction to full motorway standard. In any case he says traffic flows for several years wouldn't justify it. But when W-470 is built this segment will need upgrading. Most will have to be elevated so the cost is likely to be about $100m.
To fund its present work the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority (NWPPHA) - a joint powers agency of the cities of Broomfield and Lafayette, and County Weld - sold some $414m revenue bonds June 2001 at which time ground was also broken on construction. The design-build contract with a joint venture of Kiewit and Washington Group is for about $190m with $23k/day penalties for late opening.
The most spectacular construct is the 4-level fully directional interchange at the eastern end with I-25 and E-470. Design and construction was shared with E-470. In total the NWP has 25 bridge structures, all steel plate girder. They cover an intermediate interchange with US-287, four road grade separations and a BNSF railroad line. 15 active oil wells had to be capped and relocated and major gas lines and valves moved, some only achieved after litigation. The highway required 228ha (564ac) right-of-way, and involved 4.75m cub meters (6.2m cub yds) of earthmoving. The pavement is asphalt except for the toll plaza. There is one mainline toll plaza and a pair of ramp plazas at the US-287 interchange, and provision for widening into the center for extra lanes, and for one more interchange.
$22m is being spent on buy-up for the locals of parkland and there is provision for bike and walking trails along the whole length of the road. Several pedestrian underpasses were added to the original design in another effort to gain favor with greens. There is a 90m (300ft) right of way. Fiber optic conduit was placed the length of the road. Th speed will be posted 70mph (113km/hr), the same as other controlled access highways in the state.
The road provides new east-west connectivity across the north of the metro area. A trip from the highech parks and malls in Broomfield to Denver airport will be 25mins to 30mins compared to an hour or so at times looping down to I-70 close to the central part of the metro area.
Traffic forecasts by Vollmer Assoc are for 30k veh/day 2004, 67k for 2010, 108k for 2020. The first projection they say is "unadjusted for ramp-up" and elsewhere 15k has been published for first year traffic. Toll revenue the first year is projected at $6.3m allowing for ramp-up and revenue for 2010 is put at $37.8m, for 2020 $91m and for 2030 $125m. All these numbers are based on no-470 to the south. If as now seems likely W-470 is built by the end of the decade, thn the NWP must benefit significantly from the connection.
The toll plaza canopies are a very strange design – fat stone columns that soar way up in the air supporting the canopy with multiple cable stays. We suspect these devilish contraptions will creak and groan in the wind. If a column crumbled the toll plaza would not be a pretty sight.
Meanwhile a single tapered stone column will hold the canopy for three cash lanes one side, and another similar tapered column will do the same for the other direction of traffic. Down the middle of the plaza are four positively slim stone columns from which is suspended a large trussed gantry frame to carry electronic toll readers, cameras and other sensors over four highway speed electronic toll lanes. At least this one has some redundancy. A dump truck could take out one column and the gantry would still have some chance of staying up suspended from the other three. We can't recommend paying cash however at this plaza...
Baum and Bear Sterns were underwriters, Ambac the insurer, AG Edwards and PB Consult (Pam Bailey Campbell) financial advisers, Vollmer the traffic consultants. Carter and Burgess did preliminary engineering and oversight, while but the DB contractor did its own detailed design.
A California type electronic toll system is being installed - similar to that on area's major tollster, E-470 Public Highway Authority (E470PHA). Hogan says that arrangements are in hand with E470PHA for interoperability between the two pikes. NWP will enlist its own customers, but they will make use of the E470PHA Customer Service Center which will handle enrolments, issue tags, and deal with inquiries. The NWP electronic toll lanes and accounts will use the same EXpress Toll brand name and signage as that of the established E-470.
Tolls have not been officially announced but will likely be the same as E470s' $1.75 for cars at the mainline barrier plaza and 75c at the ramp plaza. They will probably go up in line with E-470's toll rates. With inflation at present levels, there is planned a 25c toll increase about every 3 years.
E-470
January 3 this year E-470 was completed by length – no road is ever complete in all respects – when its Segment IV between US-85 and I-25-North opened for traffic its full 76km (47mi) which describes a "reverse-C" semi-circle around the eastern part of the Denver metro area. CEO Ed DeLozier says traffic on the new segment is light so far. But he has been struck by a sudden surge of new electronic toll accounts being established by residents of the Fort Collins area, which is 65km (40mi) north of the northern end of the tollroad.
"We sold close to 4,500 new transponders in January, a record, and a large number of them were to people up in Fort Collins," DeLozier told us. "That tells me they are planning to make quite a lot of trips via 470 to the airport and points south. We were quite surprised that the tollroad was of so much value that far north."
Overall traffic on E-470 this year has been well below projections - around 100k/day compared to forecasts of 110k. March traffic was knocked by snow storms that dumped some three feet of snow in the area and closed the road for 36 hours. (Other area roads were closed for 2 to 3 days.) DeLozier says the problems of the airlines, and United in particular, have hurt 470 revenues because of its role as a feeder to the airport from north and south.
"This goes back even before September 11," he says.
Still they are pushing ahead with a series of improvements which cumulatively increase the capacity and attractiveness of the road. At the far southern end of the road almost in the evening shadow of the 4-level stack interchange that E-470 makes with C-470 and I-25 the tollroad is building east-facing ramps to Jamaica Street a local distributor that was jogged eastward when the stack was built. That will give the local area more convenient connections to the tollraod.
Also this Segment I of the tollroad from the I-25-South interchange to Parker Road is being widened to 3-lanes each direction. This 9km (5.5mi) segment was the first to open in June 1991. While the pavement is one extra lane each direction, the bridgework is being built to handle 4-lanes per direction for wa widening forseen maybe ten years off. On the northern side of Toll Plaza A at the end of Segment I, construction is under way for a truck climbing lane, about 2.4km (1.5mi) length, so heavy trucks pulling out of the toll plaza don't slow car traffic.
E-470 was the first in the US, possibly in the world, to implement full highway speed electronic tolling in an open-road 2x2-lanes in June 1991. This feature is so popular there's design under way for a widening to 2x3-lanes of open-road ET. Toll Plaza A is seen as ultimately 8-cash toll lanes each direction and 3 highspeed electronic toll lanes per direction.
Development continues along the tollroad corridor giving the authority confidence that expanded capacity will be used. New hospitals, firestations, and shopping malls are coming along.
And at I-70 in about the middle of the tollroad an anomalous traffic signal is being banished. Back in 1995 when this bit of 470 was being built they needed to keep costs right down. An existing diamond interchange of I-70 with a local Gun Club Road was used, and signals installed. First stage improvements to the interchange involves a simple pair of flyovers to take the tollroad over the top of the diamond interchange and should go to construction in the fall. A fully directional freeway-to-freeway interchange will be a further improvement, maybe ten years away.
A number of the 470 interchanges have missing ramps, in most cases because of the cost of dealing with railroad lines running alongside the crossroads. As traffic builds up and there is a revenue stream to support them, improvements will be made. Meanwhile adjacent interchanges and local streets have to be used.
State Toll Authority
Colorado's state toll authority only got launched October last year within the Colorado Department of Transp (CDOT), but it has been busy. It isx expected to raise $4b in capital for toll projects over the next It received a $1m loan from the department to cover its startup costs. Its acting executive director is the department's deputy director, Peggy Catlin. A three month moratorium it put on private sector proposals has expired and it is looking at rival proposals for tolls on express lanes on I-70 Pena Blvd to the Mousetrap IC with I-70, and for express lanes in the median of C-470 from Wadsworth Blvd to I-25. One of its earliest projects is likely to be the W-470 project completing the Denver area beltway. It is employing consultants to do studies.
It has already published a listing of some 100 potential toll projects and given a weighted ranked them according to congestion level, traffic over 30k daily, trucks over 1.5k daily, the project's presence in the local plan, its freeway/expressway status, and population of the area.
Leading projects in this list are:
• I-25-North, Denver to Fort Collins, about 87km (54mi) needs third laning and major reconstruction
• I-70-West, C-470 to I-25, 22km (14mi) needs extra lanes and reconstruction
• I-70-east, I-25 to E-470, 24km (15mi) needs extra lanes, possibly toll express lanes, the subject of private sector proposals already
• I-25-South, Denver to Colorado Springs, 105km (65mi) an extra lane and reconstruction
• I-70-Front Range Rockies, C-470 to Eagle, 182km (113mi) extra lanes, new tunnels, dynamic pricing
• US-36 retolling of Boulder-Denver Turnpike, extra lanes, rebuilds, new interchanges, possible toll express lanes
• US-85 I-25 to C-470, 16km (10mi) of urban arterial south from CBD, needs upgrade to expressway
• W-470, I-70 north (discussed above)
Statewide, no Colorado Toll Authority or Enterprise
Perhaps it is the thin air in the mile-high capital, but they are having trouble getting their names straight. Colorado state legislation last year created a "Statewide Tolling Enterprise" to develop a "statewide system of toll highways" with the power to impose tolls, issue revenue bonds, "and exercise other powers necessary and appropriate to carry out these purposes." Then the legislation-writers managed to head up the bill in large block letters "Statewide Toll Authority."
Authority, Enterprise, Commission, Corporation, well, who cares? Those darned westerners don't stand on formalities.
But then of course they go out into the capital markets and the darned thing sounds like some stalinist outfit out of Romania or Poland in the 1980s. State Tolling Commission? What state? Where, everyone asks, wracking the brain to remember those Balkan states that used to have state enterprises.
Oh, heck, you say, it's in Colorado? Why not say that in the title? Titles usually carry a word that's a geographic locator. Like New Jersey Turnpike, or Illinois Tollway. Lets you know where it is.
And guess what? The mile-high tollsters of Colorado DOT say to heck with the silly legislation. Within months they have added the Colorado title and their first annual report is from the "Colorado Statewide Tolling Enterprise" – all spelled out there in big letters on the cover.
Of course that is a bit of a mouthful. So now they are calling themselves the Colorado Tolling Enterprise on their website, and they even deploy the abbreviation CTE. But the heading on the webpage is Colorado Tolling Enterprises, plural. Spawning little sister agencies? Gawdammit that 'ess' was a mistake, they say. Hopefully it will be changed by the time we get to print, they say.
Anyway by now the "Statewide" from the legislation has gotten thoroughly dropped. All the official writing is about the CTE. "The CTE was made possible by recent legislation... The CTE also adopted byplaws... CTE's Acting Director etc" read the official news releases.
The "Statewide" adjective sounded a bit ridiculous given the size of the state: 400 miles x 300 miles (640kmx 500km) on the map and most of it unihabited rugged mountains. Not likely there will be many statewide pikes for quite a few years, so why set yourself up to be the butt of cowboy humor.
"Say, have you heard this darn Statewide Tolling Company, or whatnot, is planning to put up a tollgate around these parts?" you can here someone ribbing his pardner near Chimney Rock on the Ute high plain?
Of course legislators representing the people around Steamboat Springs in the far northwest, or Durango will soon see all the CTE roadbuilding around Denver and on its main drags, I-25 and I-70, and they will give the governor and his CDOT hell: "Yah dropped the Statewide eh? That figures. Yah needed our votes to set up this contraption, then you figured out it ain't gunna be building roads statewide after all, so you let them city slickers on East Arkansas Avenue change its name. Well ain't that dandy? Wonder if the District Judge in Grand Junction is going to have a problem when one of their cars is pulled over on I-70. 'You are called what? Your car says on the side Colorado Tolling Enterprise?' I read here in the law that there is established a Statewide..." TRnews 2003-06-10
