A new report underscores how expensive toll roads are for Colorado motorists. We hope it causes some of the state’s anti-government crusaders to curb their enthusiasm for promoting such tollways at the expense of upgrading Colorado’s public highways.
Two metro-area toll roads, the Northwest Parkway and E-470, now are the third and fourth most expensive urban-area tollways in the nation on a cost per mile basis, according to Wilbur Smith Associates, a Connecticut-based consulting firm. Tolls on the two expressways average about 21 cents per mile.
That’s about 10 times as much as you pay in taxes to drive the “free” state highways. They aren’t really free, of course, since they are funded by the state’s 22 cent-per-gallon motor fuel tax, automobile registration fees, and some other charges. But if your car averages 22 miles per gallon, you pay just a penny per mile in fuel tax. Pro-rate your auto registration fees and you probably pay about 2 cents a mile to drive a state highway like C-470.
We’re not against toll roads. Like Gov. Owens and his transportation chief, Tom Norton, we recognize that Colorado’s transportation backlog is so great that toll roads should be part of our transportation solutions.
We also like adding toll lanes to existing expressways, thus providing fast travel for drivers willing and able to pay for it, while easing congestion on the remaining free lanes.
But Owens and Norton are also wisely fighting for a faster, cheaper and more effective fix for our transportation backlog: Referendums C and D on the Nov. 1 ballot. Their passage will authorize $1.2 billion in highway bonds to finance 60 worthwhile projects throughout the state, paid for by surplus general fund revenues without tolls – and without a tax increase.
Opponents like former state Senate president John Andrews oppose the referendums and say they’d solve Colorado’s transportation needs exclusively through toll roads. “The future is toll authorities, not the outmoded gas tax,” Andrews recently wrote. Well, that’s the future if you want it to be. You can choose to pay 21 cents a mile, with all the attendant hassle, to drive toll roads instead of public highways. Or you say “yes” to C and D for a more convenient public highway network at far less cost.
Two cents a mile or 21 cents a mile. We wish all our choices were this easy.
