Dan Gibbs says Toll Road bad news for Summit County

BrokerIPTV-Mark Eibner: Mark Eibner with BrokerIPTV and I am fortunate enough to be here for Summit Association Realtors with Colorado State Senator Dan Gibbs, maybe you can tell us the cities that you represent here in our state?

Dan Gibbs: Yeah sure Mark, I represent Summit County, Grand County, Gilpin, Clear Creek, western Jefferson county and western Boulder County. Now first of all for Colorado tourism is our second leading economy in the state of Colorado. Whereas much of the mountain communities that represent, we are based on a tourism based economy and so many actions that eventually take place down at Denver potentially devastating impacts on our local economy up here. We are looking at to toll road bills on I-70 right here as Senate Bill 213 and Senate Bill 209, that both would bring tolling to I-70. One would be on the weekends. The other would be 24 hours a day. Now when we are competing with other Western States, especially with skier traffic or recreation which Colorado obviously is known for, you remember here in the same ones that not every Coloradoan lives in the mountains, but the mountains lives within every Coloradoan, while you start tolling I think people are going to think twice about heading up the mountains

Mark Eibner: Great. And do you have any other proposals or I mean what is about your thoughts - I know we have a lot of, - I think we have a lot of natural resources in the state of Colorado, whether it is mining, logging I mean there is got to be other tax revenues we can use.

Dan Gibbs: Yeah, well the Colorado department of transportation, CDOT,, their budget is approximately $1 Billion a year. They have said they need additional $1.5 Billion, so that is about you know $2.5 million annually to keep up with existing infrastructure. We look at the growth in the State of Colorado. We are expecting a huge population growth. We base our transportation funding right now solely on the state and federal gas tax, it is that the state is $0.19 on a gallon, federal is $0.22 on a gallon. I think we need to revisit that, because that obviously doesn't cut it when we look at our transportation needs for the growing population. So, I think we do need to look outside the box, the I-70 collaborative, that is a group made up of Denver Metro Chamber made up by Ski Country USA, made up a local communities along the I-70 corridor, coming up with recognitions in only two months with both short and long term approaches and the federal highway administration in Colorado department transportation are part of these discussions. We are going to take the recommendations too heart. they are going to run with it. So, that will likely have recommendations on funding, they will have recommendations on potentially widening or a bus or potentially a train, that they have been working for about a year bringing in all the stake holders together and not just the mountain communities again, but folks from a state wide perspective to really look at the future of I-70 and how we can meet the needs of the growing population.

Mark Eibner: Great, excellent, well thank you very much Dan and good luck on that bill.

Dan Gibbs: That's good, thanks.

Posted on April 10, 2008 01:06:26 by Blog Author