The Colorado Legislature dumped the idea of congestion pricing, in the form of a $5 toll, for I-70. Truckers, skiers and ski resorts hated the idea - the trucking industry, especially. So the recommendation is now for a rail system. GLWT.
The Denver-Glenwood Springs I-70 section is on the truck route between Chicago and
Los Angeles and the main artery to Aspen, Vail and old mining towns turned to casinos. It is also the "steepest longest-steep" freeway anywhere ever.
From the Denver Post:
(T)he plan to put tolls on I-70 collapsed into a heap of chuckles. Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, a Colorado Springs Republican who sponsored the plan to charge $5 tolls near the Eisenhower Tunnel, laid over his bill until May 26 — Memorial Day. That effectively killed it because the legislature will be adjourned by then.
"When you're sitting in the traffic jams that day," McElhany said to his colleagues with a mischievous smile, "just think about the $5 you could have paid to be out of it."
From an earlier piece of optimism from Toll Roads News:
Tolls were used in the mid-1950s to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, now de-tolled US-36. The traffic crisis on the Denver-Glenwood Springs segment of I-70 is caused principally by high-income vacationers and recreationists, so the equity argument for financing improvements with tolls seems strong.
Image from the I-70 Coalition.
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