Comments on: Colorado CDOT to Expand I-70 - Decides Constitutional Rights Not Important http://www.commuteroutrage.com/2008/05/30/colorado-cdot-to-expand-i-70/ Exposing fraud, waste, abuse, and general stupidity Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:03:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Harry Dale http://www.commuteroutrage.com/2008/05/30/colorado-cdot-to-expand-i-70/#comment-1982 Harry Dale Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:42:41 +0000 http://www.commuteroutrage.com/?p=479#comment-1982 Wow, are you all wet on this one. Just a novel thought, but why don't you get the facts before your write an article? To someone that has been intimately involved in the I-70 mountain corrridor improvement debate for the past 7 years in Colorado, you are completely ignorant of the real issues. You have no idea of the complexity of the problems and the politics involved over many years and several Colorado administrations in regard to an I-70 solution. The real threat to the voters of Colorado has nothing to do with the 25 stakeholders in the I-70 Collaborative Effort process, but with the outright and nearly criminal manipulation of a NEPA process by the Owens Administration. Of course, you don't mention any of that, but you obviously don't know or want to understand the real history. The 2001 Colorado ballot initiaitve you are referring to was for a $50 million test facility in Pueblo to develop a monorail technology that may or may not have ever been used anywhere. It was purely a set aside for research and development in Pueblo. The voters did reject it, but again they were not being asked to fund a rail alternative for the I-70 corridor, but just to develop a test facility in Pueblo. Contrary to your belief, these are two very different topics. In addition, a few things have changed in Colorado since 2001. The RTD Fastracks initiative passed in 2004 which was a sales tax increase to fund light rail in Metro Denver. If you look at 2006 public surveys in Colorado, the overwheming majority support light rail as their number 1 priority action for reducing congestion. I can propvide you with this survey if you would like me to. Where is your refrence to any Colorado polls in more recent years or do you think that a ballot initiaitive in 2001 would not change in 2008? What was the price of gas in 2001 and what is it in 2008? The 25 members of the I-70 Collaborative Effort were representatives from all the stakeholders affected by I-70 congestion and potentially affected by I-70 improvements. They came together with a consensus agreement which is significant under any circumstance. You can mock such an activity, but in Colorado, this is somewhat historic. All dissenting parties over the 8 year Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement process agreed on a solution of a number of significant highway improvements in the bottleneck areas and to begin working on an advanced guideay transit solution for the corridor. I can send you a copy of the consensus agreement if you would like. This process should be a national example of how to break a NEPA Study stalemate and gridlock and actually get something Done, but you mock it as a complete failure to represent voters' interests. I credit CDOT Executive Director Russel George and Governor Bill Ritter for having the courage to put all dissenting stakeholders in a room and tell them to work out a solution. Had this been done back in 2000, we would already be constructing the I-70 solution today. I would suggest that the Colorado voters really need to wake up and lookout for uninformed reporters such as yourself, who perhaps even unintentionally grossly distort the truth. Wow, are you all wet on this one. Just a novel thought, but why don’t you get the facts before your write an article? To someone that has been intimately involved in the I-70 mountain corrridor improvement debate for the past 7 years in Colorado, you are completely ignorant of the real issues. You have no idea of the complexity of the problems and the politics involved over many years and several Colorado administrations in regard to an I-70 solution. The real threat to the voters of Colorado has nothing to do with the 25 stakeholders in the I-70 Collaborative Effort process, but with the outright and nearly criminal manipulation of a NEPA process by the Owens Administration. Of course, you don’t mention any of that, but you obviously don’t know or want to understand the real history.

The 2001 Colorado ballot initiaitve you are referring to was for a $50 million test facility in Pueblo to develop a monorail technology that may or may not have ever been used anywhere. It was purely a set aside for research and development in Pueblo. The voters did reject it, but again they were not being asked to fund a rail alternative for the I-70 corridor, but just to develop a test facility in Pueblo. Contrary to your belief, these are two very different topics.

In addition, a few things have changed in Colorado since 2001. The RTD Fastracks initiative passed in 2004 which was a sales tax increase to fund light rail in Metro Denver. If you look at 2006 public surveys in Colorado, the overwheming majority support light rail as their number 1 priority action for reducing congestion. I can propvide you with this survey if you would like me to. Where is your refrence to any Colorado polls in more recent years or do you think that a ballot initiaitive in 2001 would not change in 2008? What was the price of gas in 2001 and what is it in 2008?

The 25 members of the I-70 Collaborative Effort were representatives from all the stakeholders affected by I-70 congestion and potentially affected by I-70 improvements. They came together with a consensus agreement which is significant under any circumstance. You can mock such an activity, but in Colorado, this is somewhat historic. All dissenting parties over the 8 year Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement process agreed on a solution of a number of significant highway improvements in the bottleneck areas and to begin working on an advanced guideay transit solution for the corridor. I can send you a copy of the consensus agreement if you would like.

This process should be a national example of how to break a NEPA Study stalemate and gridlock and actually get something Done, but you mock it as a complete failure to represent voters’ interests. I credit CDOT Executive Director Russel George and Governor Bill Ritter for having the courage to put all dissenting stakeholders in a room and tell them to work out a solution. Had this been done back in 2000, we would already be constructing the I-70 solution today.

I would suggest that the Colorado voters really need to wake up and lookout for uninformed reporters such as yourself, who perhaps even unintentionally grossly distort the truth.

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