Gov. Bill Owens looked pleased with himself as he picked up the last orange cone from the T-REX project in an orchestrated media event.
Others might be pleased, too, since the project is more of a win for Iran and Saudi Arabia than for Castle Rock or Highlands Ranch.
Denver officials seemed delighted that counterparts across the nation were on the phone asking how they, too, could spend hundreds of millions to construct a highway named after an extinct creature. Owens himself said that “five years ago was a dinosaur.” He showed no awareness that Interstate 25 is still a dinosaur, albeit fatter than before.
T-REX is global story, and a loser for Denver, for two reasons:
First, it contributes to the power and influence of oil exporters like Iran and Saudi Arabia by encouraging the illusion that it’s still feasible to commute in SUVs between work and 3,400-square-foot homes every day.
Supersized I-25 helps explain America’s growing thirst for petroleum (60 percent of which is now imported). Petroleum imports were up 16.1 percent between 2000 and 2004, says the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Domestic petroleum production peaked in 1972 at 9.6 barrels; it’s now down to 5.1 barrels a day.
T-REX is Exhibit A in demonstrating how highway expansion is a key part of a doomed model that started with the old Valley Highway. It showed how wider roads attract more commuters, leading to traffic jams that prompt building wider roads, which attract more commuters … and so forth. The end game is dependence on petroleum imports from our “friends” in the Middle East and Venezuela.
Opening T-REX must also have been an occasion for toasts by housing developers delighted that taxpayers had again subsidized their subdivisions far from town. Without improved access, such developments would be suitable for grazing cows or growing wheat.
The light rail system alongside I-25 won’t open until November, but does anyone think it will put a serious dent in the number of cars on T-REX? If so, why bother doubling the highway’s capacity to carry cars?
Is there a tie between feeding our gas tanks and sending 139,000 (or so) young Americans to invade Iraq, site of three of the planet’s 10 largest oil fields? Neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney have mentioned oil as a motive, but there’s no denying that global competition for oil is heating up as China and India enter the race big-time.
Then there was the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the cone-free Downing Street exit while the governor posed for the cameras. The gorilla is, of course, global warming. Scientific debate on this subject is over: massive dispersal of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels has already led to a warmer atmosphere.
So it turns out that T-REX is not just a highway, it’s a dangerous three-way intersection: 1) more cars dump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to more global warming; 2) rising reliance on oil imports challenges our national independence; 3) highway projects facilitate ever more remote subdivisions, which means more commuting. Prognosis: catastrophe.
Actually, the catastrophe is already upon us – higher gas prices, chaos in Iraq, record temperatures and drought.
The problem is drastic (whether or not we choose to recognize it) and calls for drastic solutions.
First, stop the beast cold. Make commuting by car an impossible nightmare. Put back the orange cones, restore I-25 to two lanes. Devote the fresh lanes to ultra-low-energy means of transportation. Prompt commuters to move back into town. Recycle the empty, unsold houses into wildlife parks. Encourage telecommuting.
Of course, this isn’t likely to take place soon, but it raises a question: if we won’t even face up to the challenges – threats, really – of Middle East chaos, the looming end of the petroleum era, and catastrophic global warming, then what hope do we have for overcoming those threats?
James Outman is a writer and publisher who lives in Boulder.
