Every so often, I have to protect my trusted sources.
This time, it’s Robin Wiesner, 32, who boldly expressed herself in this column Jan. 1, only to be mocked, scorned and, well, mostly teased.
Wiesner, 32, who works for Frontier Airlines near Denver International Airport, is sick of paying tolls on E-470 and the Northwest Parkway. The toll roads – already among the most expensive in the nation – increased tolls by another quarter at each toll plaza effective Jan. 1. In response, Wiesner had this to say:
“I am about to be paying $2 more a day, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but there goes my Starbucks. … I won’t get to go to Nordstrom. … By the way, I have a Land Rover for sale. … I think I need to get a Volkswagen Jetta or a Honda.”
The Land Rover remains on the market – a relic of the $1.45-a-gallon era. And Wiesner takes the toll road only one way on her 64-mile round trip. She says the tolls are too steep – even for a Land Rover-driving, Starbucks-drinking, Nordstrom-shopping, double-income-no-kids professional who has to get to her relatively well-paying job on time.
Meanwhile, her co-workers at Frontier, including chief executive Jeff Potter, can’t stop ribbing her. They say things like, “Oh, you’re leaving? Are you gonna take the toll road?” Then they laugh as if they are writing their own television sitcom.
I ran into Potter at an aviation dinner Friday and asked him about the treatment Wiesner has been getting at work.
He wryly pushed up his nose with an index finger, feigning snootiness, and giggled. When I beamed him a disapproving look, he said: “Oh, we’re just kidding around. … Robin is great.”
Robin is not just great. She is a hero.
There are many minions at the airport and neighboring hotels and businesses who will tell you they can’t afford the toll roads. But Wiesner is from the demographic that can well afford them but still avoids them. Her plight is instructive – particularly with the recent downgrade of Northwest Parkway’s debt to junk- bond status. That’s why she has been called to testify before a committee in the state legislature Feb. 8.
Wiesner said she will testify in support of House Bill 1116, sponsored by Rep. Gwyn Green, a Democrat from Golden. The bill would outlaw noncompete agreements between toll-road operators and local governments.
To get the toll roads built, in the 1990s, eight communities signed noncompete agreements. These agreements limited what roads could be improved, expanded or even built. For example, in 1995, Commerce City agreed to lower the speed limit and install traffic signals on Tower Road, which runs parallel to E-470. Green says agreements like this result in “gridlock by design.”
Tom Norton, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, disagrees. He says these agreements are needed to attract private financing.
“It sounds ominous,” he said, “but all it is, is a way for the bondholders to know … that (traffic) projections won’t be eliminated by a similar (road).”
Traffic projections for new toll roads have enough problems. In selling bonds, toll roads, on average, overestimate traffic by 20 to 30 percent, according to a 2004 report by Standard & Poor’s Ratings.
CDOT plans to open toll lanes on Interstate 25 this spring and is studying whether to add toll lanes to Interstate 225 and C-470. The lanes will offer those willing to pay the price a chance to escape congestion. But will they relieve congestion? Or will they, like other toll roads, depend on congestion to meet the traffic projections needed to pay off bonds?
Green said she hears from people who take Sunday bike rides on the Northwest Parkway toll road because there are so few cars using the lanes. And at one time, there was a suggestion that trucks would use E-470, relieving congestion on I-25.
“We heard from the trucking industry,” Green said. “They said truckers will not take either E-470 or the Northwest Parkway because the tolls are too high.”
All teasing aside, Wiesner said she is preparing her testimony. She’s been unhappy about tolls for years but says she never suspected the roads were rigged.
“The more I find out about it, the madder I get,” Wiesner said.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Al at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
