C-470

C-470: What Should Be Done?
By Daniel G. Jennings
Denver
The metro area is now debating what to do about C-470, the congested freeway on the West Side. The current proposed solution is a bad one: toll lanes for drivers who want to avoid crowded lanes.
From personal experience on the 91 Freeway between Riverside and Orange County in Southern California I know that drivers don’t use such lanes. The Denver Post has ably reported on the failures of toll road projects around the nation including Denver’s vaunted Northwest Parkway. The fact is drivers simply won’t use toll roads when they can drive for free on good alternate routes. Toll roads only work when there is no alternative, as is the case in many places back East.
Coloradoans don’t use toll roads but they do use light rail as the packed trains on RTD’s existing transit system demonstrate. So why not instead of building toll roads, build a light rail line along C-470 from the Tech Center to Golden. Such a line could connect with RTD’s existing system at Mineral Avenue, the T-Rex at the C-470/E-470/I-25 Interchange and the proposed West Corridor in Golden. Such a rail line could also connect to a light rail line up E-470 to DIA and the Northern Suburbs. E-470 was designed to coexist with light rail tracks.
I know such rail lines aren’t in RTD’s FasTracks plans but they could easily be added. Polls indicate that drivers are willing to pay extra taxes to expand C-470, so why not a T-Rex style project to use gas or property tax revenue and federal funds to pay for extra lanes, a light rail line and park n rides on C-470 and a light rail line on E-470?
Rail lines that the public would actually use would make a lot more sense than toll lanes nobody would actually drive on. The question is do our public officials have the sense to see that or not?