As funding for highway construction and upkeep dwindles, Colorado has turned toward a once-unthinkable way to fund road expansion: tolls.
The Federal Highway Trust Fund gave the state nearly 9 percent less in 2013 than in 2008, after adjusting for inflation, mirroring a nationwide dwindling of earmarked funds for road maintenance.
In Colorado, state budget woes and a unique tax limitation law have exacerbated the trend, according to transportation officials. The state’s Department of Transportation said it spends $1.2 billion on roads, when in 2007 it spent today’s equivalent of $1.7 billion.
Plans to replenish the agency’s coffers from a newly flush general fund are being dashed by the state constitution’s requirement that excess revenues are refunded directly to taxpayers.
Nobody said they think the state can successfully raise its gas tax. That has left government with two options, said Don Hunt, the outgoing Department of Transportation executive director: improved cash management and tolls.
Reshuffling the way the agency manages its available cash has let it keep up with maintenance needs so far, Hunt said, but he called that “pulling the last rabbit out of the hat.”
To expand lanes, the agency is relying on private companies to charge tolls. Some residents last year objected to the state allowing a firm to charge vehicles for use of additional lanes on U.S. 36 between Denver and Boulder. But the state also plans to allow a company to charge tolls on new Interstate 70 lanes in the mountains and on the way to Denver International Airport.
“We just don’t have any other place to turn,” Hunt said. “We can’t grow by millions of people and not invest in transportation.”
