Tag: Transportation
Stimulus funds won’t help with big-picture fix for I-70
If you’re looking for innovation in Colorado’s share of the Obama administration’s stimulus package, you’re likely to be disappointed in what some transportation officials are calling “a jobs bill.”
Most of the $520 million in new spending headed this way will be pumped into much-needed and “shovel-ready” paving projects and repairs for bridges and interchanges that have been put off for years in the face of shrinking federal and state highway budgets.
State’s engineers give Colorado near-failing grades on transportation infrastructure
Colorado’s engineering community was preaching to the choir as the state Legislature convened its first session of 2009 Wednesday. The engineers released a report card that gave the state’s transportation infrastructure a pitiful D+ and warned that it would drop to a near-failing D by 2010 if dramatic action wasn't taken.
LaHood could be good for Colorado train backers
The pending appointment by the Obama administration of Republican Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation could be a positive sign for public transportation buffs in Colorado who would love to see light rail expanded on the Front Range and a high-speed train into the mountains.
Western Slope lawmakers eye stimulus funds, tax hikes for roads, bridges
While some Western Slope politicians are eagerly eying their slice of the federal stimulus package pie expected from the Obama administration early next year, other lawmakers are already starting to craft a long-term funding fix for crumbling infrastructure at the state level.
High-speed train to mountains may be derailed by economy
With the price of oil plummeting, the economy tanking and Colorado’s roads crumbling, there hasn’t been much post-election talk about high-speed rail service between Denver and the state’s major mountain resorts.
The road to a severance tax solution
Should Colorado lawmakers somehow convince oil and gas executives to voluntarily pay more severance taxes, some say that money needs to be a big part of fixing the state's critical transportation-funding shortfall.
Western Slope pols look for energy industry to take voluntary tax...
The oil and gas industry spent $10.8 million to bring about the Election Day defeat of Amendment 58, a measure that would have dramatically increased the severance tax the industry pays to the state for extracting resources from Colorado soil.
So it seems counter-intuitive that the industry would now voluntarily agree to pay even more severance tax, which in Colorado is currently the lowest among all major energy-producing states. But that’s exactly what key Western Slope lawmakers are hoping to accomplish in the coming months.
Transit issues top Colorado mayors’ priorities for Obama
Everybody wants the ear of President-elect Barack Obama and the nation's city halls are no different.
MSNBC today posted a survey of 225 mayors and a nifty interactive map of their calls for relief from the tanking national economy, crumbling infrastructure, unfunded mandates, fossil-fuel based energy and spiraling costs of two wars. Not surprisingly, Colorado mayors from Cañon City, Thornton, Denver, Grand Junction, Vail and Westminster are most concerned about transportation issues.
Huge transportation needs drive Ritter, Penry past ‘petty politics’
In the end, it all comes back to transportation. According to reports, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's transportation panel is making a major push for $1.5 billion more a year for roads, bridges and public transit. And that news has been immediately embraced by Sen. Josh Penry of Fruita, who last week was chosen the GOP’s Senate Minority Leader.
Amendment 58 won’t raise gas prices, report says
In spite of what oil and gas companies are saying, a 'yes' vote on Amendment 58 won't mean higher prices at the gas pump. According to a report issued yesterday by the Bell Policy Center, an economic research organization in Denver, gas prices are not directly determined by severance tax rates. Amendment 58 seeks to eliminate a tax benefit historically handed to the oil and gas industries in Colorado in order to recoup $300 million per year for schools, transportation and natural resource projects.