{"id":43221,"date":"2021-12-15T18:44:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T01:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/as-climate-vote-nears-communities-worry-it-will-reduce-funding-for-road-projects\/"},"modified":"2021-12-16T01:44:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T01:44:06","slug":"as-climate-vote-nears-communities-worry-it-will-reduce-funding-for-road-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/as-climate-vote-nears-communities-worry-it-will-reduce-funding-for-road-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"As climate vote nears, communities worry it will reduce funding for road projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Interstate
Interstate 25 stretches through Weld County on Dec. 11. (Kevin J. Beaty\/Denverite)<\/span>Kevin J. Beaty\/Denverite<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Colorado Transportation Commission will vote Thursday on a climate change policy that could shift resources away from polluting highway expansion projects and toward more environmentally friendly ones like public transit and bicycle lanes.<\/p>\n

The proposed rule, along with a push for nearly 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, is part of the state\u2019s work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Tailpipe emissions account for the largest source of such pollutants in Colorado.<\/p>\n

The rule would require the Colorado Department of Transportation and the state\u2019s five metropolitan planning organizations to determine the effect their planned transportation projects would have on climate emissions.<\/p>\n

If the total is higher than a set limit, money would be diverted to cleaner alternatives.<\/p>\n

That could mean a shift of some $6.7 billion by 2050 toward cleaner projects, according to a state analysis.<\/p>\n

If approved, the rule could be sharply felt in quickly growing communities along the Front Range.<\/p>\n

More than half a million people now live in the Northern Front Range, an area that includes Fort Collins and Greeley. The population has jumped by nearly 100,000 in the last 15 years and is forecast to hit nearly 900,000 by 2040.<\/p>\n

Interstate 25\u2019s days of being \u201cjust a dead highway on the way to Wyoming,\u201d are long over, said Michelle Gardner, a gas station manager in northern Colorado who drives the road every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely needs to be bigger,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Business groups and some local governments, especially in the Pikes Peak region and in northern Colorado, have pushed back on the climate rule. They worry that CDOT will use the rule to justify not funding desired road projects, from connecting Powers Boulevard to I-25 in Colorado Springs to expanding a stretch of I-25 between Thornton and Longmont.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me when, what we so desperately need, especially in Northern Colorado, is roadways, we have a major department of the state now that is more concerned with the environment than it is with what its primary function should be \u2014 and that\u2019s transportation,\u201d said Scott James, a Weld County commissioner.<\/p>\n

\"A
A housing development in Weld County that sits close to I-25. (Kevin J. Beaty\/Denverite)<\/span>Kevin J. Beaty\/Denverite<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

James said Weld County supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it believes CDOT should be focused most sharply on building and maintaining roads. A 20-page letter from the county argues the agency is overstepping its legal authority and questions whether the rule can be enacted and enforced, among other complaints.<\/p>\n

James said Weld County\u2019s southwestern corner \u2014 communities like Firestone, Frederick and Dacono about 30 miles north of downtown Denver \u2014 is growing especially fast. New homes are typically located in sprawling, car-oriented subdivisions. He said that that\u2019s what people want, not dense, more walkable and transit-friendly neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet the free market dictate how people live, let people decide for themselves how they want to live. Because trust me, if the demand were there for those kind of compact, walkable communities, they would exist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Walkable communities do exist in Colorado \u2014 they were just mostly built before World War II. Most new neighborhoods and commercial areas since then have been built for cars; the state and federal governments enabled that by subsidizing highways to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard from some Republican lawmakers that this is social engineering,\u201d Matt Frommer, senior transportation associate with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said of the proposed rule. \u201cIt totally ignores the fact that like decades of investment in wider highways is social engineering itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

This policy would begin to shift that, though state officials say that highway expansion projects will continue where deemed necessary.<\/p>\n

Rather, they\u2019ve emphasized that the new policy is meant to create more transportation options.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can make our downtown areas and our commuting routes pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly and transit-friendly, there are a lot of folks who [would] want to utilize those options to get to work in a more efficient way and a less costly way,\u201d Gov. Jared Polis said on \u201cColorado Matters\u201d last week.<\/p>\n

Planned highway expansions, like Interstate 70 at Floyd Hill near Idaho Springs, or I- 25 north of Denver, will have transit infrastructure baked into them. CDOT officials hope new transit facilities and services there and elsewhere, as well as new pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, will encourage more dense neighborhoods and commercial areas where driving is less necessary.<\/p>\n

Some members of the transportation commission are worried the policy veers too closely to land use matters \u2014 which Colorado law makes the domain of local governments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not interfere with local land use,\u201d Kathy Hall, chair of the commission, said at a recent meeting.<\/p>\n

Some commissioners also pushed CDOT staff to weaken language in the rule that, in a previous draft, explicitly said that road expansions or technological improvements like ramp metering aimed at improving traffic flow would not be considered climate mitigation projects. Research shows that the congestion benefits of road expansion projects are typically short-lived as more drivers use the road.<\/p>\n

A newer draft of the rule discourages the classification of such projects as climate-friendly, but doesn\u2019t outright prohibit it. It uses \u201ccompromise language,\u201d in the words of CDOT Executive Director Shoshana Lew, that \u201cdoes a nice job threading the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a safety perspective, CDOT is very much in favor of all the kinds of things that are being talked about here, whether its roundabouts or ramp metering,\u201d Lew said at a recent meeting. \u201cThe question with respect to this issue is just, \u2018Are those things environmental mitigation or not?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmentalists worry that softer language could allow for more road expansions, which they say need to stop altogether.<\/p>\n

Frommer said even the mass adoption of electric vehicles won\u2019t be enough for the state to reach its goal of reducing transportation emissions by about 12.7 million metric tons by 2030.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get about two-thirds of the way there with electric vehicles,\u201d he said. \u201cThe remaining third really needs to be addressed with strategies that reduce both the number and the distance of vehicle trips \u2014 and specifically single-occupancy vehicle trips.\u201d<\/p>\n

By potentially shifting money toward cleaner projects, the proposed rule is a \u201cmust pass\u201d if Colorado is going to meet that climate target, Frommer said.<\/p>\n

Thomas Fox, a Monument resident who was gassing up his SUV in Berthoud last week, said he\u2019d be happy to ride a bus or a train to help the climate \u2014 if there were more options that suited his schedule and needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got an 8-year-old,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m wondering, what\u2019s gonna happen when he\u2019s my age or even older?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Proposed rule is part of state\u2019s plan to reduce emissions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-43221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43221"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=43221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}