Crossing that bridge now...not when it crumbles beneath us...

According to the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) over 52% of Colorado’s state highways are rated in “poor” condition, up from just 40% in 2006. While that may not seem like a striking figure consider this: 33% of our highways have deteriorated so badly they need $8.6 billion for full reconstruction. In an already tight state budget we need to address our infrastructure needs sooner rather than later so that we invest in Colorado instead of shelling out billions just to repair it.

In Larimer County alone we have 43% of our state highways, about 316 miles worth, rated in poor condition. We also have about 10% of our state highways rated as being too congested for their vehicle loads.

None of this is particularly riveting until you start looking at the damage we are doing to Colorado by delaying answers to our current and future infrastructure needs. CDOT estimates that, under current funding, in the next 25 years we will only increase our lane miles by negligible amounts, far less than even 1%. Meanwhile we will increase our population by 50% and increase our demands on the state highway system by 61%. That means we will not have the funds necessary to pay for the demands on state roads, but we will nonetheless overwork them. When we place burdens on state infrastructure that it is not designed to withstand we also deteriorate roads and bridges more quickly; this becomes the worst kind of double-edged sword for the state: we do not adequately fund our infrastructure development only to find that the costs of maintaining it become extraordinary.

If you are looking for an even more alarming number, CDOT has identified about 750 rockfall sites that threaten motorists around the state, a problem unique to states with mountainous regions. CDOT only has funding to provide mitigation (nets and planned blasts) for about five of those locations each year.

Over the next 10 years, just to reach a moderate level of infrastructure quality for bridges, pavement, and maintenance, we need to come up with $390 million/year, or $3.9 billion over 10 years, just to keep Colorado from looking like a zombie movie.

None of this includes what we need for snowplow removal, preparing the Front Range corridor for the needs of I-25 and I-70, or CDOT operating in a state that routinely sees blizzard conditions and has the highest average elevation of any state in the Union.

There are ways to fix this problem but the worst thing we can do is wait. If we wait we will not have to spend money now - even though we are delaying projects that do need funding this instant – but that just means we will have to spend even more later than if we behaved responsibly today.

How to do better:

Because we have not updated our fuel taxes in twenty years we are effectively bringing in about 42-cents on the dollar for infrastructure spending compared to the early 90s. In addition, tax revenues slated for infrastructure are dependent upon the number of gallons sold and not the fluctuating price of fuel, so when we spend money to encourage alternative-fuel vehicles and carpooling we are inadvertently making the infrastructure problems more difficult to solve.

For that reason, and many others, we must support changing Colorado’s gasoline taxes to be based on the price of fuel and not the amount sold. Making gas taxes proportionate to gas demand will have the rare quality of pleasing both liberals and conservatives, to say nothing of moderates.

For conservatives: proportional fuel taxes do not engage us in social engineering or burden families or businesses that consume more fuel.

For liberals: proportional fuel taxes do not punish the state for encouraging sustainable transportation.

For moderates: Colorado will be able to pay for its needs and not waste money in the future, our infrastructure will be competitive, and our state’s roads will not become a disaster zone.

We avoid debating issues like this because there are more controversial topics we want to discuss…we must make procrastination from our state legislators a controversial topic because right now we are giving them license to delay until our only option will be to do too little, too late.