Highway Expansion - Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems Today

CDOT 2006 Statewide Survey

 

A public opinion survey was conducted on behalf of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) to gather resident evaluations of the services provided by CDOT, to determine the priorities placed on various trade offs by the public, and to learn more about the travel behavior and characteristics of the state’s citizens.   Selected results relating to traffic congestion are displayed below.

 

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Clearly traffic congestion is consistently recognized as the largest transportation problem in the State by the survey responders.   However, lack of Public Transportation is indicated as the second highest rated transportation problem in Colorado. 

 

 

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Travel options to relieve congestion received the highest rating in this poll which demonstrates the public’s desire to see travel options developed that reduce traffic congestion.

 

 

 

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Light Rail and Car Pooling rate significantly higher in this survey question than adding lanes as the best solution to the State’s congestion problems.  The passage of RTD’s FasTracks initiative in 2004 would also support these results.

 

 

 

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This question is new for the 2006 survey and is quite interesting.  Here adding lanes to highways ranks third, behind adding facilities to serve other transportation modes and maintaining existing road and bridges as the highest transportation priority in the State.

 

 

 

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In 2006, adding lanes to highways ranks third behind increased highway maintenance and Light Rail as the priority for spending new State transportation dollars.  This is a slight change from 2003 which may be attributable to the growing acceptance of Light Rail as a viable transportation component and the passage of FasTracks in 2004.