Andy Cross, The Denver Post
Light-rail train horns interrupted a news conference announcing Colorado’s new push for public input on its transportation priorities. State officials couldn’t have asked for a better reminder that getting around doesn’t always mean new pavement.
It’s likely that the 10-year priority plan that results from a listening tour of all 64 counties this summer will include plenty of highway repaving and widening, especially for long-neglected stretches now throttled by burgeoning growth.
But the Colorado Department of Transportation’s new leader said Friday that simply accommodating more cars won’t work as planners work out a wholesale update for CDOT’s long-discussed $9 billion backlog list of maintenance and projects.
“Thinking about how we solve for capacity in a way that preserves the things that people love about living in Colorado has to be a multimodal solution,” said Executive Director Shoshana Lew, Gov. Jared Polis’ appointee to head CDOT, after the event. “I’ll use I-25 as an example, because the biggest capacity (expansion) projects we have right now, other than Central 70 (in Denver), are on I-25.
“We are not going to be able to build our way out of congestion on a corridor where 85 percent of a growing population lives. The math just doesn’t work.”