Federal transportation officials today approved a $54 million loan that will allow CDOT to extend HOV/HOT express lanes for about 10 additional miles on U.S. 36 from Pecos Street to the Interlocken Loop exit in Broomfield.
Colorado’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise, a unit of the Colorado Department of Transportation, has pieced together about $307 million in total funding for the project and the federal loan was the final element of the financial package.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the signing of the loan documents. On Wednesday, LaHood was in the Denver area to announce a $1 billion federal grant to RTD for its FasTracks project.
HPTE plans to select a contractor team for the U.S. 36 project early next year and construction should start in the spring. The target is to have the new express lanes open by July 2015, said HPTE director Michael Cheroutes.
The Regional Transportation District is contributing about $120 million for the express-lane extension and the balance of the money — about $133 million — is coming from a number of local, state and federal funding sources.
HPTE currently operates about five miles of express lanes on Interstate 25 from a point near Coors Field to the junction with U.S. 36 and then a few miles up the Boulder Turnpike to Pecos Street.
The HOV lanes are reserved for carpools and buses, and vehicles with single occupants are able to use the lanes if their drivers pay a toll. That makes them high-occupancy-toll, or HOT, lanes as well.
HPTE’s plans call for the addition to U.S. 36 of one express lane in each direction from Pecos to Interlocken. The project also calls for contractors to reconstruct the existing pavement on the highway and widen it to allow for a 12-foot shoulder.
Three bridges will be rebuilt as part of the project and a commuter bikeway will be constructed along much of the 10-mile corridor as well, CDOT said.
The highway between Boulder and Denver opened as a toll road in 1951, but bonds were paid off early and tolling facilities were removed from the Boulder Turnpike in 1968.
U.S. 36 today carries as many as 120,000 vehicles a day, according to a traffic and revenue study that was commissioned by HPTE.
Cheroutes said it was “gratifying” to have the federal loan complete funding for the express-lane extension, and he added that other highway corridors in metro Denver “are looking at this as an example of what can be done through collective and collaborative efforts.”
A coalition of government and business officials in the U.S. 36 corridor have been working for years to come up with solutions for growing congestion on the highway.
HPTE plans to solicit interest from private construction and engineering firms in possibly competing to add a second-phase of the U.S. 36 express-lane extension, from Interlocken to Table Mesa Drive in Boulder.
That would return tolling, albeit limited to the express lanes, to the entire 18-mile length of the Boulder Turnpike.
Some traditional sources of funding transportation improvements have been shrinking, and Cheroutes said the approach taken by the U.S. 36 coalition, including its tolling component, “may be the only way” some projects will get done.
HPTE and CDOT are working with local officials in the C-470 corridor to explore possible ways of getting congestion relief for commuters on that highway.
The parties likely will consider a model similar to the U.S. 36 express-lane extension as one possible way to help relieve the gridlock that plagues sections of C-470.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
