{"id":793454,"date":"2019-02-26T16:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T23:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/colorado-faces-meager-budget-in-fight-against-ski-traffic\/"},"modified":"2019-02-27T06:17:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T13:17:47","slug":"colorado-faces-meager-budget-in-fight-against-ski-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/colorado-faces-meager-budget-in-fight-against-ski-traffic\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado faces meager budget in fight against ski traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this 2017 time exposure photo, the sun sets as traffic moves along Interstate 70 west of Denver. Heavy ski traffic along the interstate has been common for years, but Colorado’s recent population boom is making it increasingly challenging for transportation officials who deal with a bare-bones budget. (AP Photo\/Thomas Peipert)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

DENVER \u2014 \u201cFriends don\u2019t let friends drive I-70.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tongue-in-cheek mantra is often uttered by Colorado skiers and snowboarders who frequent resorts far from the crowded mountain corridor, which funnels thousands of vehicles onto two lanes west of Denver every winter weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nightmarish. Hours and hours in the car. I think the last time I went to Keystone (typically a 90-minute drive from Denver), I spent four hours getting there and five hours getting home,\u201d said Cole Capsalis of Denver. \u201cThere was more time in the car than skiing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old product manager, who went to the University of Utah in part because it allowed him to hit the slopes up to 100 days a year, moved to Denver about six years ago. But his love of ski resorts quickly took a tumble because of horrendous traffic more akin to Los Angeles freeways.<\/p>\n

So Capsalis ditched resorts for less crowded \u2014 albeit more dangerous \u2014 remote backcountry snowboarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would prefer to risk my life on some level \u2026 as opposed to sit in I-70 traffic on the weekends,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Traffic along the route has been common for years, but it\u2019s exacerbated by a recent population boom in the Denver area.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraffic has increased incredibly statewide, and nowhere do you see that more actively than on the I-70 corridor,\u201d said Amy Ford, a state transportation department spokeswoman.<\/p>\n

Between 2010 and July 2017, the population in Denver and its suburbs increased by an average of nearly 51,000 annually.<\/p>\n

In 2000, nearly 10.3 million vehicles on I-70 crossed the Continental Divide, which slices through the heart of Colorado\u2019s ski country. That figure was about 13.4 million in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always going to get worse. We\u2019re expecting that,\u201d said Patrick Chavez, who works at a transportation department office at the mouth of two tunnels bored under the Divide. \u201cWe continue to try to find measures to mitigate and minimize the impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s getting harder as more people move to Colorado, he said.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s population has increased 53 percent since 1990, while lane miles on the state\u2019s highway system have only increased 2 percent, officials said.<\/p>\n

The department\u2019s typical $1.4 billion budget, 70 percent of which goes toward road maintenance, is only slightly bigger than neighboring Utah\u2019s. But Colorado has 6,864 more highway lane miles (11,046 kilometers) and 2.4 million more residents.<\/p>\n

Unlike Utah, Colorado doesn\u2019t dip into sales tax to fund its transportation budget, and its state gas tax, the 12th lowest in the country, hasn\u2019t been raised since George H.W. Bush\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

High-speed rail could be built through the corridor, but may cost between $11 billion and $32 billion depending on the route and type of train used, according to a 2014 study commissioned by the transportation department.<\/p>\n

The three viable options would require significant right-of-way acquisition, and crews would have to blast between 15 and 35 tunnels. A train on the existing right-of-way would have to travel so slowly on the interstate\u2019s curves and grades that it couldn\u2019t compete with driving.<\/p>\n

That means transportation officials will continue to rely on smaller-scale solutions to an increasingly difficult problem.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re quicker at clearing accidents. They\u2019ve installed traffic information signs at resorts and in-pavement LED lighting on areas of the interstate with poor visibility. They\u2019ve widened tunnels and introduced a bus system that runs on I-70. And they\u2019ve built a 13-mile (21-kilometer) toll road at a notorious pinch point on eastbound I-70.<\/p>\n

All those steps, Ford said, have had a positive effect and reduced the number of accidents.<\/p>\n

In 2008, nearly 1,900 accidents were reported along the corridor and in 2017, about 1,200 accidents were reported.<\/p>\n

The transportation department also is doing a relatively good job of keeping traffic flowing through the roughly 100-mile (161-kilometer) stretch that serves major resorts like Vail, Breckenridge and Keystone.<\/p>\n

In January 2012, for example, it took drivers an average of an hour and 50 minutes to travel west through that section during the peak of weekend traffic. The numbers fluctuate through the years for a variety of reasons, including weather, but by January 2018, it took just over two hours.<\/p>\n

Traveling that stretch without traffic typically takes 90 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a significant challenge, but that corridor is getting a lot better,\u201d Ford said.<\/p>\n

Still, words and numbers might not be enough to convince those who love to loathe I-70, and the department\u2019s biggest challenge could be battling the perception that the interstate is getting exponentially worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched it deteriorate so much \u2026 that I would have a really hard time believing that anything significant would have changed at this point,\u201d Capsalis said.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this 2017 time exposure photo, the sun sets as traffic moves along Interstate 70 west of Denver. Heavy ski traffic along the interstate has been common for years, but Colorado’s recent population boom is making it increasingly challenging for transportation officials who deal with a bare-bones budget. (AP Photo\/Thomas Peipert)AP | AP DENVER \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-793454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 20:25:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}