Skiers and snowboarders beware: If you’re hoping Colorado’s candidates for governor come equipped with good ideas for fixing Interstate 70’s notorious weekend congestion, get ready to be disappointed.
The Denver Post figured that the gubernatorial candidates would be expecting the question when they addressed major ski-industry movers and shakers last week. But when reporters put the I-70 question to the batch of candidates for the governor’s office, precious little came of it.
Granted, the real-world truth is that there isn’t a lot of money available — federal or state — to “fix” I-70 as it jogs through the mountains, and it’s usually only congested on weekends, especially during ski season. But still, we had hoped for better answers from our potential state leader on this signature Colorado conundrum.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper had the best chance of getting caught in ski traffic this past year. He was the top skier of the candidates in terms of getting slope time. The Democrat skied three days last season. Republicans Scott McInnis and Don Maes did not ski at all.
But the mayor’s idea for I-70? He suggests looking to Northern Italy, where officials offer incentives to the drivers of big rigs to keep them off the road during peak traffic times. And while it’s true that big trucks lumbering up the mountain road do slow traffic, Hickenlooper didn’t have a plan when asked what incentives he would offer.
McInnis, who says he would ski if his knees would let him, suggested sticking with the status quo.
The former congressman likes the success of programs the Colorado Department of Transportation implemented in the last two years that stage heavy-duty tow trucks at regular intervals along the mountain road to clear accidents rapidly.
We also like that program, as well as the new pull-off areas for truckers to chain up when the snow falls and higher penalties for truckers who don’t use chains. But those are, at best, fixes at the margins and not a solution. And they’ve already been done.
Maes likes the idea of a monorail, but notes there is no money for such a pricey option. Indeed. We can’t imagine there will ever be money for a monorail, and are surprised the Tea Party candidate would entertain such a potentially wasteful solution that would have to be heavily subsidized by taxpayers for decades.
Maes also likes the so-called zipper lane solution that would allow peak traffic to take a lane from opposing traffic. We’re also intrigued by that plan, which the legislature has prodded CDOT to seriously consider.
The I-70 problem has stumped many smart people, and we wish we had a brilliant idea to add to the mix.
The trick to solving the problem is finding some way to erase the bottlenecks that occur when the highway shrinks each way from three lanes to two lanes at the bottom of Floyd Hill to the Eisenhower tunnels.
But enormous real-world challenges and tricky political ones have long prevented any serious discussion about widening the stretch.
We get that there’s little to no money for large solutions at this point, but that’s why Coloradans will be looking to their would-be governor for more creative solutions.
