Mayors and county commissioners from Colorado’s Pikes Peak region say they will start lobbying harder for more transportation dollars to fix and widen roads including portions of Interstate 25.
Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach said there are more priorities than dollars available to improve traffic flow on local highways. The city’s website notes that among U.S. cities of 500,000 or fewer residents, Colorado Springs is considered the most congested.
“But in the past I don’t know if the Pikes Peak region has been front and center with Denver in the conversation over transportation dollars,” Bach said. “I don’t think that we have, quite frankly, stood up for ourselves.”
That may change on June 11 when members of the newly formed Pikes Peak Region Mayors Caucus meets with Don Hunt, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation.
The Mayors Caucus last week sent a letter to Hunt, outlining their chief complaint about funding from CDOT. Mostly, the mayors say the Pikes Peak region has been slighted historically out of transportation dollars and are likely to be shortchanged again in 2013.
“And we want to understand why,” Bach said.
Over the past six years — from 2006 to 2011 — the Pikes Peak region’s portion of CDOT funding has been 7.06 percent, below the previously agreed upon funding amount of 9.48 percent, said officials.
During that same time, CDOT was able to give the Denver Regional Council of Governments its agreed upon funding amount.
If the region would have received the entire 9.48 percent of the spending pie over the past six years, there would have been $135 million available in additional funding.
That would have meant the crews could have rebuilt both the Cimarron and Fillmore interchanges on I-25, or finished other critical road projects in the region, Bach said.
he region was able to get $96 million this year, or 10.27 percent of the CDOT budget, which will help, said Bach.
But next year, the Pikes Peak region is projected to get, once again, less than its agreed upon amount.
“We feel it is important for CDOT to commit to funding the region at the 9.48 percent that was agreed upon,” the Pikes Peak group said. “This would provide an additional $22 million every year to the region. With our long list of needed projects, this funding is crucial.”
Hunt told Pikes Peak officials that CDOT has been moving more money away from Colorado’s urban areas to maintain the rest of the state’s roads.
As CDOT’s budget dropped from $1.6 billion to $1.2 billion, Hunt said, “the ability to fund new projects has almost evaporated.”
The Pikes Peak group knows there are poorer areas of the state that need help, Bach said, and it is willing to work with CDOT to make sure funding dollars are spread fairly .
“Still, our region has 12 percent of the state’s total population living here,” Bach said. “We are giving up what could be our share of the funding.”
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
