CDOT Vision

CDOT 2006 Transportation Survey

Climate Change

I-70 Highway Expansion Fatal Flaws

I-70 Highway Capacity

I-70 Highway Congestion

I-70 Highway Travel Times

I-70 Highway Construction 

I-70 Highway Construction Economic Impacts

I-70 Highway Construction Impact due to Peak Spreading

I-70 Highway Expansion & Water Quality Impacts

I-70 Highway Expansion Impact & Mountain Sprawl

I-70 Highway Expansion & Air Quality Impacts

I-70 Highway Expansion & Health Impacts

I-70 Highway Expansion & Greenhouse Gas Emissions

I-70 Highway Expansion & Global Warming

I-70 Highway Expansion & Energy Consumption

I-70 Highway Expansion & Our Dependence on Foreign Oil

I-70 Highway Expansion & Peak Oil Consumption

I-70 Highway Expansion & Noise

I-70 Highway Expansion & Visual Impacts

I-70 Highway Expansion & Travel Choice

I-70 Expansion & RTD's FasTracks

I-70 Tolls & Corridor Parking Fees

Basic Concepts for the I-70 Mountain Corridor

Now is the time to diversify Colorado's transportation portfolio to meet the State's growing transportation needs and give the people of Colorado a Travel Choice.  The entrenched highway culture within the CDOT organization is a flashback to the 1950-1960's Interstate Highway era and not a 21st century asset. 

Transportation Planners must begin to embrace energy efficient fixed guideway public transportation as the primary means of increasing transportation capacity in the 21st century.

When will Transportation Planners Wake Up and Pull Their Collective Heads Out of the Sand?

With no other option than the I-70 highway, all mountain corridor mobility comes to a halt when severe weather hits.

Six lanes on I-70 will do absolutely nothing to stop weather related accidents, injuries, fatalities and the resulting complete road closures that often occur when significant wind, snow or rain events hit the corridor.

How hard is this to understand?

National studies confirm that expanding roadway capacity in any major transportation corridor simply provides an incentive for those travelers that were avoiding peak periods, using carpools, or taking alternate routes or alternate modes, to get back into their single occupancy vehicle and drive in the corridor during the peak period until the congestion level quickly reaches where it was prior to the capacity expansion. 

And yet roadway expansion remains the transportation planning norm throughout the state and country driven largely by elected officials and state and federal decision makers.

A six lane I-70 will be just as vulnerable to bad weather, poor driver behavior, avalanche control, accidents and highway construction, as a four lane I-70 and will provide no option to these events, but to sit in traffic and wait with everyone else.

When it snows at 2 inches per hour or more (which is common in the Mountain Corridor, especially from Silver Plume through Vail Pass), there is no way CDOT can keep up with snow removal operations on four lanes, let alone six lanes.

Heavy snow, wind, avalanches, rockfalls and traffic accidents causing injuries and fatalities, drive I-70 closures and shut down the High Country economy.  Why would we spend billions of dollars on I-70 highway expansion that will be just as vulnerable to weather related closures that shut down mobility in the mountain corridor and impede the state's resort economy?  Wouldn't we be better off investing those same dollars in a safer and more reliable transportation option?