April 14, 2021
Dear Senators Hansen, Rodriguez, Coleman, and Gonzales and Representatives Lontine, Garnett, Gonzales-Gutierrez, Valdez, Woodrow, Bacon and Herod:
On behalf of the Denver Streets Partnership, I’m writing to ask you to advocate for a transportation funding bill that prioritizes multimodal infrastructure and service. Specifically, we are calling for a bill that:
- Creates a long-term investment in the Safer Main Streets program that is successfully focusing dollars on improvements to our main streets and arterials that makes them safer and more people friendly.
- Invests significant dollars in transit operations so we can expand and improve service that increases ridership.
- Requires a reprioritization of the projects on CDOT’s current 10 Year Plan to ensure that we are not focusing new transportation dollars on projects that increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and fail to solve our transportation problems.
The Denver Streets Partnership (DSP) is a coalition of community organizations advocating for people-friendly streets in Denver. On people-friendly streets, walking, rolling, biking, and transit are the first choices of transportation for all people. Streets for people are living, public spaces
that connect us to jobs, schools, services and each other, and are designed to foster health, happiness, and opportunity for all.
We appreciate that the General Assembly is working on a bill that would increase transportation funding and to move that funding to a new foundation that can continue to support transportation into the future.
I’m submitting this letter to let you know where DSP stands based on the proposal released by bill sponsors in March. We want to help pass a strong transportation funding bill this session and offer some recommendations to ensure the bill is something that we can support. We also understand that given some of the challenges we have in Colorado around raising new revenues that this bill will not reach the high investment levels we think are needed to fully build out the multimodal system in a way that meets the state’s climate, safety, and mobility goals.
Based on the proposal that was released a few weeks ago, we are concerned that this bill does not put enough emphasis on multimodal funding and puts too much emphasis on road widening
projects that will not solve our state’s transportation problems. At this point, the DSP cannot support this bill. Please consider advocating that the recommendations below be included in this bill to ensure that this is a transportation funding bill that supports the future we want, not just the status quo.
New funding cannot be dedicated to highway projects that increase vehicular capacity. The most concerning part of the proposal as presented is that the new state HUTF funds will go to complete the CDOT 10 Year Plan of projects, which includes a number of highway vehicle capacity projects that seem poised to increase driving. For example, one of the projects, I-270, specifically says in its factsheet, “Additional lane capacity will allow more vehicles to travel on I-270 at the same time.”
Projects that result in increased VMT not only contribute to negative environmental and health impacts on those living near the projects and on the state as a whole, but also draw money away from projects that work toward better outcomes.
According to the Highway Boondoggles report series by one of our partner organizations, CoPIRG, adding new general purpose lanes does not solve the problems facing our transportation system. In fact, they exacerbate our problems by inducing more driving, while disproportionately impacting the health and quality of life of low income communities and communities of color. To make matters worse, road widening is hugely expensive, siphoning away limited dollars from more cost effective and efficient strategies and options. Finally, once new road capacity is built, it is a sunk cost and we are stuck with the consequences for decades.
All other strategies to reduce pollution, create more sustainable transportation options, and improve the quality of life in the region will be undermined if hundreds of millions of dollars are locked into transportation projects that push the opposite way and continue to flood our roads with vehicles.
We are glad that CDOT is moving away from general purpose lanes to managed lanes but managed lanes are not the solution alone. A managed lane without robust transit service in place from the start with the necessary funding for ongoing operations will likely just result in more vehicles and higher vehicle miles traveled. We need assurances that this will not happen.
The easiest way to ensure we do not waste limited funds on highway projects that will fail to build a better transportation system in Colorado would be to forbid new funding from going to projects that increase the number of vehicles traveling in a corridor. However, we also support including language that requires that CDOT reevaluate or reprioritize their 10 Year Plan in a way that ensures we are not supporting strategies that simply increase driving and VMT. Some suggested strategies to do this include:
- Require that the first projects and programs on the CDOT 10 year project list that are completed with this funding must be all the road repair, maintenance, and multimodal projects.
- Direct CDOT to review and update the Strategic Project Pipeline in their 10 Year Plan within the next two years, calculate the VMT, GHG, and PM2.5 impacts of each project including induced demand, and prioritize projects that deliver VMT, GHG, and PM2.5 reductions in line with state goals.
- Require that air regulators review the state and regional transportation plans to ensure they meet VMT and GHG reduction targets and National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
- Require CDOT to develop a tool to calculate and measure beneficial land use policies that reduce transportation costs. CDOT should develop a system of incentives that can reward communities that focus housing and jobs in ways that reduce VMT. This tool should be something CDOT can use in collaboration with local governments to help them measure the impacts of local land use decisions.
- Codify what is already CDOT policy: all new lanes must be managed lanes and must be designed such that they can accommodate buses in them (something that failed to happen on the I-70 Eastbound Peak Period Shoulder Lane).
- Require that new managed lanes cannot be constructed without enough dedicated transit operating funding to offer sufficient transit service to reduce VMT along the corridor.
- Require that tolls raised from managed lanes be earmarked first for maintenance of the lanes and then for transit, multimodal infrastructure, and other VMT reduction strategies. ● Ensure that any reduction in FASTER fees that support transit are explicitly made up through HUTF funding.
Require that at least $50 million annually be dedicated to CDOT’s Safer Main Streets and Revitalizing Main Streets programs. These two programs were launched last year and are operated by CDOT. The dollars are focused on projects that make main streets and arterials safer for people walking, rolling, biking, using transit, or driving. Many of the streets that make up the Denver region’s high-injury network are urban arterial main streets like Federal Boulevard, Colorado Boulevard, Alameda Avenue, and Colfax Avenue. These streets were originally state highways but as residents and businesses built up around them, they are now the equivalent of main streets for hundreds of thousands of people.
In 2020, CDOT’s Safer Main Streets program put out a call for projects within the DRCOG region. The first $59 million went to 30 projects, administered by CDOT via an application process. The projects included sidewalks, protected bike infrastructure, transit access improvements, pedestrian safety improvements, and shoulder improvements for bicyclists. A $500 million, 10 year investment could fund nearly 300 projects around the state putting us on track to make every main street safe and people friendly.
This is the single best tool for improving multimodal access and safety, particularly in urbanized areas, we’ve seen in the CDOT toolbelt recently.
Public transit operating funds must be a priority. While there are always transit capital costs, the true transit need that will result in more options for people and lower VMT is transit operating dollars. Operating dollars for transit is what buys high-quality service that truly provides an effective option that generates ridership. Unfortunately, transportation funding is too often focused on construction or is too unreliable year in and year out for a transit operator to launch a new route or upgrade service.
This is especially true for infrastructure bills that pump in a large number of one-time capital dollars into a transportation system. While perfect for large roadway construction projects, they fail to give long-term, reliable transit operating dollars.
As the federal government prepares to pass a large infrastructure bill, it is even more imperative to use the limited dollars raised via this state bill — dollars that will be consistent over the next decade — to operate the transit that won’t be supported by a big capital bill. Construction dollars are coming from the federal government; we cannot waste this opportunity to dedicate as much of the state’s ongoing transportation dollars as possible to operating transit.
This bill has a chance to create dedicated transit operating dollars that can truly bend the VMT curve down and tackle everything from safety and climate change to air pollution and long-standing racial and social inequities in our transportation system. But we need to think bigger in this bill:
- Ensure that all the new transportation funding in this bill (state HUTF, local HUTF, Multimodal Options and Mitigation Fund, Nonattainment Fund) can be used for transit operating.
- Ensure that the Multimodal Options and Mitigation Fund dollars have a 1:1 match requirement (with the option for smaller matches in smaller communities) ● At a minimum, this proposal should restore the size of the Multimodal Options Fund (MMOF) to FY18-19 levels, when SB18-1 transferred $75 million into the fund. The proposal should increase the size of the MMOF to at least $750 million over 10 years by allocating a higher percentage of the TNC and Delivery fee revenue, or by devoting a larger share of the general fund transfer to the MMOF.
- With limited dedicated multimodal dollars, none of the Multimodal Options and Mitigation Fund should fund multimodal projects on the CDOT 10 Year Plan. The 10 Year Plan projects should come from CDOT’s HUTF dollars.
- Commit more of the CDOT HUTF money to multimodal projects in the major population areas. Reducing VMT will take targeted, large investments in our most urban areas and a targeted, significant funding source. Whether it’s reallocating more dollars into the non-attainment fund, the multimodal and mitigation options fund, a directive to CDOT to use a larger share of their dollars for metro area transit, or creating a new pot of money
that expands transit options, it is critical we ramp up transit across municipal and county lines in metro areas like Denver.
This transportation funding bill comes at a critical point for the Denver region and Colorado as a whole. In a growing state that is already suffering significant impacts from air pollution and climate change we must act now. This is the time to invest in transportation projects that will get us closer to our health and climate goals, not set us back even further. I appreciate your consideration and welcome the opportunity to continue this conversation.
Sincerely,
Jill Locantore
Executive Director
Denver Streets Partnership
CC: Senator Winter
Representative Gray