PERRY: Road weary in Colorado, we’re fast not going anywhere, folks

None of us here in the metro area will be living life in the fast lane ever again. Sorry,

It’s not just that I’m getting old. Well, older. It’s just that there are now so many people living here in the Aurora-Denver area who brought their 2.2 cars with them, that we can no longer move quickly anywhere.

The fast lane? What a joke. The 10-county metro area is fast becoming home to 3 million people, and what seems like just about that many semi-trucks and plumber vans. The same interstate and freeway system now collapsing under the weight of those millions of cars was designed when the area population was about 600,000 people.

You get the picture. While the region has added a few more lanes and some highway spurs, for the most part we don’t have near the capacity for our overgrown and ever-growing need.

Outside of late evenings and early Sunday mornings, you aren’t going anywhere fast on metro-area highways ever again. Get used to it. The biggest reason for that is because Colorado lawmakers don’t want to ask you to raise taxes or start tolls for new road construction, and there isn’t even enough money in the state’s annual $1.1 billion highways budget to keep the roads and bridges we do have in good repair.

Years ago, when there were fast lanes on I-25 and I-70 you could drive fast in, and my hair was all brown, I used to sit through Colorado state transportation committee hearings as a reporter. Back then, state Sen. Al Meiklejohn ruled over that part of the state government. That and education. They dubbed the Arvada Republican Asphalt Al The Kiddies’ Pal. This was long before bizarro El Paso County Tea Party poopers and Club Way Right came into the picture. While Colorado has always been a frugal state, there was a time when lawmakers saw a need and funded it. Sometimes taxes went up. Sometimes taxes went down. Meiklejohn explained it this way: Running state government takes money for things like roads. They cost a lot of money to build, and a lot of money to maintain. More people means more roads. That means debt. And the debt is either on the state books, or it’s in the streets, but it’s going to be one of the two. Anyone who tells you differently is lying.

His succeeding lawmakers don’t understand that. While they pat themselves on the back on holding the line on taxes, we have amassed billions and billions of dollars in debt on Colorado roads, or places where the roads need to be. Add to that, billions of dollars worth of wasted time and fuel you spend sitting in your car on Colorado highways. Colorado’s lucrative ski industry that pays for a lot of what you don’t have to for state government services? It’s at risk because tourists are learning there are no traffic jams in Utah, Montana and Idaho. Where metro area traffic used to be an annoyance at rush hour some times, it’s now a serious problem affecting the quality the air and all our lives.

With no increase in funding in sight, here’s what you can expect: Last week, the Colorado Department of Transportation re-striped the left lane of southbound I-25 in Douglas County, reserving this new “direct lane” for motorists heading through the area and at least as far as Lincoln Avenue. Good for them. I hope it works. Even if it’s an amazing success, it won’t be near enough to end the nightly logjam on southbound I-225 near the I-25 pinball machine, which chokes and backs up to Cherry Creek Reservoir.

And the disastrous mess on I-70? It’s going to cost about $1 billion just to do something with the decaying El from the I-25 Mousetrap to Colorado Boulevard. There is no money for that or really much else in the metro area. No one will permit tolls, other than on express lanes.

So it’ll be slow going here in the metro area, probably far into the future. Accept the fact that a lot more of the rest of your life is going to be spent just getting someplace since any efforts to really fix the problem is going no place.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com