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I-70 Highway Expansion Fatal Flaws
A six lane I-70 is just as vulnerable to bad weather, poor driver behavior, accidents and highway construction, as a four lane I-70 and will provide no option to these events, but to sit in traffic and wait with everyone else.
A highway expansion ONLY solution for the I-70 mountain corridor (as proposed by CDOT Region 1 as the "Preferred" alternative in the Draft PEIS) means that Colorado residents and visitors have as their only option for travel in the corridor; personal vehicle, van shuttle or bus driving to resort destinations (even in blinding snow storms and treacherous icy road conditions). These unpleasant and dangerous experiences ignore traveler safety, discourage future Colorado visits and limit Front Range access to the major mountain resorts; instead of facilitating safety and access, and providing an option to driving in bad weather.
When it snows at 1 to 2 inches per hour or more (which is common in the Mountain Corridor, especially from Silver Plume to the EJMT, Straight Creek and Vail Pass), there is no way CDOT can keep up with snow removal operations on four lanes, let alone six lanes.
All a six lane I-70 will do is allow more unprepared motorists to crash and be injured, allow more trucks to jack-knife and wreck, allow more horrific traffic backups and strand more motorists throughout the corridor when the inevitable highway closure occurs. This is not rocket science. Colorado needs an option to driving in the corridor in winter weather conditions, which is when many Front Range Residents and Visitors want to get to the Resorts!
A six lane I-70 will not only jeopardize the safety of more motorists, but will place additional burdens on the corridor communities for Law Enforcement, Emergency Management, Fire Protection Service, Ambulance Service and the Care and Sheltering of stranded motorists.
A highway expansion alternative is the most destructive solution (environmentally, economically and socially) to the I-70 Corridor Communities, Corridor Resorts and Colorado in general.
Transportation is not an end in itself; its purpose is to serve common community aspirations for a better quality of life. Unfortunately, transportation is increasingly becoming a threat to quality of life in Colorado, not its handmaiden. Unless forceful action is taken now to reverse this trend, our quality of life will deteriorate.
Transportation is too important an issue to leave solely to transportation planners. Effective transportation solutions require partnerships – across agencies, across jurisdictions, and in collaboration with private and non-profit organizations. Every citizen of the state is a partner in this effort.
Today, many transportation agencies at every level (federal, state, county and municipal – except for CDOT Region 1) are looking to other ways of dealing with congestion. Instead of focusing on how fast cars can move through a particular place (mobility), DOTs are thinking about how easy it is to reach destinations (access) – by car, as well as by transit, bike or foot.
Click here to learn about NJDOT's approach
CDOT Region 1 wants to return to traditional planning practices that favor automobile travel and ignore other planning objectives. They advocate highway expansion to reduce congestion. Their analysis tends to:
- Exaggerate highway expansion congestion reduction impacts and
economic benefits.
- Ignore or understate generated traffic and induced travel effects.
- Overlook many economic, social and environmental costs of wider
highways, increased vehicle traffic and sprawled land use.
- Underestimate the true costs of expanding major
urban highways.
- Fail to compare highway expansion with other transportation
improvement options.
Some CDOT officials want Colorado's voting public to assume that the only way to avoid economic disaster is to spend countless billions of dollars on highway infrastructure. The truth is that massive highway expansion is a certain path to economic and environmental disaster.
Their plan ignores the most harmful impacts of highway expansion such as continuing the cycle of auto-dependent, auto-oriented sprawl, our addiction to foreign oil, increased greenhouse gas emissions, continued water quality degradation by the use of more and more chemical deicers and salted traction sand, continued air quality and regional haze degradation and related health problems, increasing vehicle - animal collisions, increasing vehicle accidents and fatalities, increasing energy costs and increasing global warming.
Not only will future oil shortages drive skyrocketing liquid fuel costs, but the oil for asphalt overlays and other highway repairs will become increasingly more expensive and drive highway maintenance and repair costs sky high as well.
Highway Expansion does not represent a sustainable solution for Colorado. Instead it represents a self serving works program for the highway contractors, oil industry and car and truck manufacturers that only benefits them and the ill-fated legacy of the Owens / Norton Regime and the pro-oil position of the Bush / Cheney Administration.
Mountain highway lanes are rarely at full capacity due to rain, hail, fog, snow, wind, ice, flooding, sun glare, breakdowns, construction, accidents, police activity, wildlife on the roadway, rockfalls, snow slides, slow moving vehicles, unfamiliar, bad or slow drivers and any adjacent activity to the highway that provides an opportunity for motorists to slow down and look. Any of these activities can impact motor vehicle travel, regardless of the number of lanes in a specific direction.
In addition, there is a known interaction between vehicular traffic in adjacent highway lanes. Due to this interaction, adding a general purpose lane does not necessarily double the vehicle capacity of the adjacent lane. Typical throughput of the additional lane will be 20 to 30 percent less than the adjacent lane.
Once a road becomes sufficiently crowded, then it becomes harder for drivers to coordinate with each other. Each driver has to anticipate what other drivers will do, and because information is transmitted between cars only via brake lights and turn signals which are crude devices at best (and turn signals aren’t always used), anticipation often turns into over-reaction. A single driver who’s too ready to hit the brakes can slow down an entire highway. And because drivers have no bigger picture of what traffic looks like, their decisions (whether to get off at this exit or trudge onward, whether to move out of this lane or stay in it) are haphazard at best.
During periods of any volume, it takes very little to create a traffic jam. A sudden lane change, hard breaking or a sudden entrance from an on ramp and a huge ripple of braking is created that can bring traffic to a stop and go condition for miles. Instead of the elegant, patterned movements of birds, drivers produce the stop-and-go disorganization of a traffic jam.
A mountain highway is an extremely variable transportation mechanism and only as good as the quality and consistency of vehicles and drivers using it.
For most I-70 Mountain Corridor motorists, the most lengthy traffic delays they have or will experience are a result of highway construction, accidents and/or bad weather that cause substantial traffic interruption and even complete closures. Often the traffic ripple effect of an accident or construction activity can last for hours, well beyond the actual clearing of the vehicles or clearing of the construction equipment involved. Passing motorists may never actually see the accident or construction activity, but can experience the delays they caused for several hours.
A Six Lane I-70 in the Mountain Corridor will create more problems than it will solve!
An I-70 Highway Expansion alternative will increase:
The number of Vehicles on the Highway in all Weather Conditions
Vehicle Miles Traveled and Congestion
Highway Travel Times
Road Rage Incidents
Accidents
Vehicle - Animal Collisions
Road Maintenance and Resurfacing Costs
Our Reliance on the automobile for mobility regardless of the escalating cost of vehicle fuel, maintenance, ownership and operation
Inefficient Energy Consumption
Pressure to Escalate Oil and Gas Extraction in Colorado and increase the Environmental Degradation that comes with it
Overuse of our Public Lands
Noise, Air, Water and Visual Pollution
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Impacts on corridor Historical Properties
Our Dependency on Foreign Oil
Our Ignorance of World Peak Oil production, (Natural Resource Depletion)
Our Ignorance of the State's increasing Senior Population
Our Ignorance of Global Climate Change
Construction Economic Impacts
Back Country Sprawl
The Elimination of any Safe Travel Mode Choice in the Corridor
The Violation of the Principles of Environmental Justice
I-70 highway expansion will just bring more vehicles, more accidents, more asphalt, more traffic, more construction, more congestion, more noise, more back country sprawl, more road rage and more pollution to the beautiful Colorado High Country. Highway expansion also fails to provide Colorado’s residents and visitors with any other option than sitting in traffic.
Most traffic jams on I-70 relate to construction activities, maintenance activities, accidents caused by careless or reckless drivers, bad weather conditions and natural hazards such as rock, snow or mudslides. Additional highway capacity isn’t going to solve these problems.
Expanding highway capacity may not generate a significantly lower level of peak period congestion. Traffic studies from all over the country point out that once additional highway capacity is made available in a previously congested corridor, many motorists simply change their travel behavior.
We all know that there is greater peak period travel demand in the I-70 corridor than can be accommodated by the current I-70 facility. When the cost in terms of travel time (congestion), cost in terms of vehicle operation, (vehicle cost, insurance, fuel, maintenance, tolls, taxes, user fees), cost in terms of the travel experience (accidents, natural hazards and dangerous driving conditions) or cost in terms of the destination experience (resort overcrowding, overuse of public lands, environmental degradation, long waiting lines), reaches our personal threshold, we stop making peak period corridor trips, but do not necessarily stop making trips altogether.
When the cost of peak period travel becomes too great, we move our trips to non-peak periods. This can be observed today by the increase in corridor travel on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and throughout the entire day on Saturdays and Sundays. We may also choose closer corridor destinations during peak periods that require a shorter trip, but still provide a valuable recreational experience and produce corridor revenue.
With I-70 highway expansion, a significant number of those motorists that had been avoiding the corridor during peak periods by taking an alternate route or by using public transportation, simply switch back to driving in the expanded highway corridor until it very quickly reaches the same congestion level as it had before the expansion. The alternate routes and public transportation will likely see a decrease in use as more motorists use the primary highway corridor, until the highway corridor reaches previous congestion levels. The I-25 TREX expansion is following this pattern. This pattern facilitates a form of peak period traffic congestion equilibrium that suggests that traffic congestion in high demand corridors is relatively permanent even when capacity is increased.
For the I-70 Corridor, expanding capacity in terms of highway expansion will most certainly allow more travel during peak periods. It may also provide for less travel during non-peak periods, since a larger portion of overall trips are being satisfied by peak period capacity. Of course, resort crowding, public land overuse, long lines at resorts, restaurants and other attractions or other overcrowding that diminishes the destination or wilderness experience, will again force corridor visitors to go back to non peak period trips or visit other states.
How crowded are resort communities already during peak periods and how much greater capacity do they wish to accommodate?
How many more cars do the resort towns want on weekends and where will they put them?
Will I-70 highway expansion create gridlock in Vail, Breckenridge, Silverthorne, Frisco, Winter Park, Fraser, Tabernash and Granby?
How about the residents of these same resort communities -
has anyone asked them how they feel about additional peak period visits and more cars and SUVs in their communities?
Many reasonable questions can be asked about increasing development pressure in the High Country by adding highway capacity.
- Where will the development occur and how will it be regulated?
- Where will the water come from to support this development?
- Are local mountain jurisdictions prepared to regulate extended growth and development to minimize local impacts?
- Is the development appropriate based on local land use codes and public infrastructure?
- Will the development pay for itself?
- Is there a water supply and both water and sewer infrastructure to support additional development and if not, who will pay for it?
- What are the environmental consequences associated with the additional development?
- Is this extended mountain development consistent with your community’s Master Plan and Vision?
- Is this extended automobile dependent mountain development consistent with Colorado Resident’s Vision for the State?
- Does this extended automobile dependent development protect Colorado’s spectacular mountain environment for future generations to enjoy?
How do we get from here:
Current Conditions
from Exit 244 (US6/Kermitt's) to Georgetown
and from here:
Current Conditions in
Idaho Springs, Lawson, Silver Plume
and Georgetown Hill
To here:
Six Lanes – No Mitigation
and here:
Six Lanes with Context Sensitive Design
(Glenwood Canyon Style Design)
without enormous disturbance to highway travel during the 10 year plus construction period
Wouldn't there be much less disturbance to highway travel for the construction of the Advanced Guideway System adjacent to the highway?
or the construction of Elevated Rail (EMU) adjacent to the highway?
Highway Expansion is the WRONG answer!
Instead of designing our future to accommodate people, our political leaders are designing our future to accommodate more cars. In essence, cars have become more important than people in our planning process.
How can such political behavior from both sides of the aisle be considered leadership?
Highway expansion results in the irretrievable consumption, exploitation and destruction of our natural resources and environment. Unanticipated consequences of highway expansion such as Global Warming, worldwide terrorism incidents and escalating political conflicts fueled by shrinking oil supplies, will not only eliminate personal freedoms for future generations, but possibly jeopardize the future of the Human Race.
What does your 21st Century Transportation Vision look like?
What does this mean to you?
Trains Not Lanes is the right answer!
The US dependency on highways as our primary transportation mode is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, global climate change, shrinking world oil reserves, US dependency on unstable foreign oil supplies, continued political conflicts and wars over oil, increasing water pollution from highway runoff, increasing air pollution from vehicle emissions and entrained dust from vehicle travel, increasing highway congestion and increasing highway impacts to communities, including health problems.
Our highway investment has accomplished its purpose, but now is the time to invest in other modes of travel and end our gross dependence on highway travel and foreign oil. Continued highway expansion today brings little benefit in terms of economic productivity and congestion relief. All of the easy highways have been built. Adding highway capacity today is in difficult urbanized areas where the construction costs and community impacts will be enormous and horrendous.
Our transportation investment in the 21st Century must prioritize energy efficient public transit development along with compact, infill and transit oriented development incentives in order to even approach some level of transportation sustainability.
CDOT transportation professionals need to give transit alternatives the priority that highway alternatives have been given over the past eight years in order to keep Colorado competitive in the 21st Century global economy.
Peak Oil, Global Climate Change, Federal Haze requirements, our aging population and our Winter Tourism Economy should motivate the State's transportation planners to pursue energy efficient and low greenhouse gas emitting transit solutions over continued highway expansion and continued auto-oriented land use and sprawl.
Sinking endless billions of dollars into highway infrastructure that simply increases Vehicle Miles Traveled and encourages more auto-dependent sprawling development, only results in more traffic, more congestion and more dollars needed for highway maintenance and more dollars needed for additional highway capacity.
This irresponsible behavior places tremendous burden on future generations (our children and grandchildren) to pay for the enormous debt we are creating to sustain our oil dependent lifestyles. We are also burdening our future generations with the cost of mitigation for the huge environmental impacts we are creating, including climate change.
Highway expansion is a short-sighted vision that benefits big oil, highway contractors, car and truck manufacturers, foreign oil interests, global terrorists and the Bush/Cheney Administration while dumping our current problems on future generations to solve.
Could we behave in a more irresponsible manner?
Highway Expansion Proponents Creed of Ignorance
Assumed by CDOT Region 1, the CDOT/BBC/FHU Economics Benefits of Transportation Investment Study and the Denver Metro Chamber and Metro Denver EDC I-70 Congestion Study
Let's ignore the fact that because of our oil addiction, we are at War in Iraq to gain access to Iraq's oil reserves.
Let's ignore the immense cost of funding our military presence in the Middle East to insure the flow of oil to the US.
Let's ignore the cost of our foreign oil purchases which indirectly fund the enemies that we are fighting not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world.
Let's ignore the fact that we are determining a transportation solution for the I-70 mountain corridor that will take between 10 and 20 years to implement (if not longer if the funds cannot be made available).
Let's ignore the fact that the I-70 mountain corridor solution will be implemented in the 2020 to 2025 timeframe, not tomorrow.
Let's design our future to accommodate more cars and trucks instead of designing our future to accommodate more people.
Let's focus our transportation efforts on moving cars and trucks instead of moving people.
Let's make cars and trucks more important than people in our land use and transportation planning processes.
Let's prioritize car and truck facilities over over bicycle, public transportation and pedestrian facilities that comprise "Complete Street" programs.
Let's ignore mountain corridor resort overcrowding and congestion that occurs today during peak periods and invite even more vehicles through I-70 highway expansion.
Let's ignore the residents of mountain communities that do not want any more vehicles in their towns during peak periods.
Let's ignore the overuse of Colorado's public lands and the environmental degradation that comes with it.
Let's design a highway widening solution that envisions automobile travel behavior in the year 2025 to be identicial or greater than today without regard for climate change, peak oil, rising fuels cost, tolling, VMT fees, geopolitical instability in the Middle East, our changing demographics and lack of highway maintenance funds.
Let’s ignore the fact that we cannot afford to even maintain the highway infrastructure that we already have, let alone maintain any new highway infrastructure that we might create.
Let's dump the enormous maintenance debt of taking care of our existing roads and bridges on our children and grandchildren while at the same time prioritizing spending for highway expansion projects that will create even more maintenance debt.
Let's allow the same 1950's/1960's interstate highway era transportation philosophy and those who support this philosophy (CDOT Region 1, Move Colorado, highway contractors, highway engineers, oil companies, automobile manufacturers, automobile dependent development interests and all politicians with a vested interest in keeping the status quo of highway expansion as our primary transportation solution) to dominate the transportation planning and funding discussion for the 21st Century.
Let's expect that the same 1950's/1960's interstate highway era transportation philosophy that created the congestion and transportation infrastructure mess that we have today, to provide our transportation solutions for the 21st Century.
Let's ignore the sustainable transportation and land use vision of the Environmental and Smart Growth organizations because they don't support the empowered financial interests vested in continued highway expansion, continued auto-dependent development, continued US reliance on foreign oil and continued US military presence in the Middle East.
Let's ignore the fact that our transportation planning and funding process is not about making the best decisions and selecting the best transportation and land use alternatives, but rewarding a select and very powerful group of special interest groups regardless of the national and international political and environmental consequences of these decisions.
Let’s ignore worldwide rising fuels costs.
Let’s ignore the cost of our national energy security.
Let's ignore the fact that energy insecurity equals geopolitical instability.
Let’s ignore the cost of maintaining a constant military presence in the Middle East to insure the flow of oil to the US.
Let’s ignore the US contribution to the funding of global terrorism through the purchase of foreign oil.
Let’s ignore the worldwide political instability that decreasing oil supplies and increasing oil demand is creating.
Let’s ignore the looming global liquid fuels crisis as we reach worldwide peak oil production and see oil production begin to decline (most experts agree this will occur between 2010 and 2014).
Let’s ignore the fact that all the easy and inexpensive highways have already been built.
Let's ignore the fact that very little economic benefit occurs by expanding existing highways.
Let’s ignore the costly and intrusive private property acquisition necessary to expand highways in developed areas.
Let’s ignore the incredible expense of highway construction today, but at the same time continue to stigmatize energy efficient public transportation solutions as too costly.
Let’s ignore the increased accidents, injuries and fatalities associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let’s ignore the air quality degradation as a direct result of vehicle emissions and fugitive dust associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let’s ignore the water quality degradation associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let's ignore the increased use of traction sand and Mag Chloride that occurs with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel along with the air and water pollution that results.
Let’s ignore the ridiculous noise level associated with the current I-70 highway and its impact to the mountain corridor communities.
Let's ignore the noise associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let’s ignore the health and community impacts associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let’s ignore the obesity problems associated with auto-dependent and auto-priority development fueled by highway expansion and at the same time discourage pedestrian, bicycle and public transportation facilities.
Let’s ignore the increased demand for State Patrol Resources, Incident Management, Emergency Communications, Law Enforcement, Fire Protection and Ambulance, Emergency Medical and Trauma Care services associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let’s ignore the increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with highway expansion and increased motor vehicle travel.
Let’s ignore the US transportation’s automobile and truck dependency and its contribution to global climate change.
Let’s ignore the induced travel impacts of highway expansion that encourage vehicle miles traveled and even more congestion.
Let’s ignore the fact that highway expansion breeds auto-dependent sprawl, increased vehicle miles traveled and more congestion.
Let’s ignore the cost of government service delivery to the dispersed auto-dependent development and sprawl that highway expansion fuels.
Let’s ignore the needs of our increasing senior population for pedestrian friendly and livable communities.
Let’s ignore the fact that as Baby-boomers retire in massive numbers, they will be driving less.
Let’s exaggerate the economic benefits of highway expansion by not taking into account the harmful economic impacts of highway construction, increased foreign fuel consumption and US agricultural land consumption for auto-dependent development and sprawl.
Let’s ignore big business and economic development association’s GREED for more customers and more profits regardless of the environmental and community impacts and consequences to future generations.
Let's ignore the fact that increasing fuel prices, fuel taxes, Vehicle Miles Traveled taxes and tolls will literally drive the middle class away from | 
