Planners have decided that new toll lanes in the median of C-470 are the way to relieve traffic congestion on the busy road.
Federal highway officials late last week approved an environmental study that recommends toll lanes as the “preferred alternative” for expanding capacity on C-470 between Interstate 25 and South Kipling Parkway, over the objections of many residents in the corridor and key Douglas County officials.
Today, members of the Colorado Tolling Enterprise will be briefed on the $385 million plan to add two toll lanes in each direction between I-25 and South Platte Canyon Road and one toll lane in each direction between Platte Canyon and Kipling.
With Colorado’s highway budget extremely tight, tolling has emerged as a favored way of paying for highway expansion.
The state is amenable to a nontolled expansion of C-470 if “somebody can magically write a check” to pay for it, said Colorado Transportation Commission member Greg McKnight.
C-470 handles up to 100,000 vehicles a day in its busiest sections. Officials estimate that the toll for the 12.5-mile trip between Kipling and I-25 would be $2.40 at rush hour.
Congestion already makes the highway resemble a “parking lot” at times, McKnight said.
Officials predict that population in the C-470 corridor will grow by 34 percent, to 708,000 people, over the next 20 years and the number of jobs in the area will grow by 44 percent, to 425,000.
Work on the toll project could begin next year under the state’s most optimistic timetable.
Duane Fellhauer, Douglas County’s public-works director, said the three-year, $8 million study that recommends toll lanes is faulty.
“We believe that much of the technical information contained in the environmental assessment is not accurate,” Fellhauer said. Instead, Douglas officials want a more detailed environmental-impact statement to examine whether toll lanes are justified, he added.
In an effort to block the state’s construction of toll roads or other major highway projects in Douglas County without the consent of local officials, Douglas commissioners recently passed a measure that requires CDOT to get county approval for such projects.
CDOT has sued the county to invalidate that potential roadblock, but there is no timetable for a ruling.
To advance the C-470 toll project, CDOT needs the Denver Regional Council of Governments to amend its regional transportation plan. Since Douglas County officials play a prominent role in the group, CDOT may have difficulty getting approval from DRCOG for C-470 tolling.
Local governments hope to survey residents in the C-470 corridor about possible alternatives to tolls, Fellhauer said, including a sales-tax increase for new nontolled lanes.
Tolling gives CDOT an alternative way of paying for highway expansion. To build the toll lanes, the state toll authority would sell bonds to private investors and tolls collected over decades would pay back bondholders.
To sell bonds for the C-470 expansion, Colorado officials still need a detailed traffic and revenue study to demonstrate that tolls will pay for construction and maintenance of the new lanes.
The state’s plan calls for no toll booths on the new lanes; all tolling would be done with electronic transponders.
Tolling has emerged as the congestion-relief solution “because we have the ability to build” the pay-for-use lanes, said Pam Hutton, CDOT’s Denver-area director. “We don’t have funds for general purpose lanes.”
If nothing is done to expand C-470, all lanes of the highway will be at “level of service F” – essentially gridlock – during peak travel hours by 2025, Hutton said.
State officials will host public hearings April 4 and 5 on the tolling proposal.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
