Road projects ahead
• $13 million: Improvements to “spaghetti junction” near Greeley, the U.S. 34 and U.S. 85 interchange.
• $90 million: Widening U.S. 34 from Loveland to east Greeley.
• $653 million: Expanding I-25 with an express lane in each direction from Colo. 7 to Colo. 14.
Correction: Work will begin in July on widening the U.S. 34 overpass over I-25 in a half-mile in each direction. A project referenced in a former version of this article, the widening of U.S. 34 from Loveland to Greeley, also includes major work at intersections but currently has no funding.
JOHNSTOWN — Northern Colorado soon will see movement on projects that have long sat unfunded, thanks to regional efforts and a recent legislative push to put more money toward transportation needs.
In conjunction with National Infrastructure Week, May 14-21, representatives of the Colorado Department of Transportation, elected officials and community leaders are traveling around the state to speak about the role of transportation in Colorado’s economy and the regional partnerships working to improve the roads.
Led by CDOT executive director Mike Lewis, the group spoke Monday morning to local officials and business leaders about the plan for phased implementation of improvements in Northern Colorado during the event outside the Scheels All Sports store in Johnstown.
CDOT transportation director Johnny Olson, who directs operations in CDOT’s Region 4, said work will begin in July on widening the U.S. 34 overpass over Interstate 25. Then, in the fall, work will begin on the interchanges of Interstate 25 with Prospect Road in Fort Collins and Colo. 402 in southeast Loveland.
Only after these projects are complete will CDOT look at beginning its project to widen the interstate between Fort Collins and Johnstown, he said. The entire North I-25 project, including adding an express lanes in each direction, will cost about $330 million and end in 2021, which is 14 years ahead of what was originally planned, said Jared Fiel, CDOT communication manager for Region 4.
Olson also said crews are on schedule to open U.S. 34 through the Big Thompson Canyon to Estes Park on May 24, as planned, after closing the highway for several months to complete permanent repairs of damage from the 2013 flood.
There still will be some final paving and guardrail work at night, which will be finished by Nov. 1, he said. Fiel said this work will have a minimal impact on traffic.
Though CDOT is making moves on certain projects, currently available funding for road work, including money allocated by Colorado Senate Bill 1 last week, amounts to only 20 percent of what is needed to complete identified projects, Lewis said.
How much funding from Senate Bill 1 will be directed toward Northern Colorado is yet unknown, Lewis said.
In total, $3.57 billion is needed now to fund the maximum planned buildout of CDOT’s I-25 widening plan and bus and rail service expansions. Express lanes from Colo. 402 to Colo. 7 do not yet have identified funding sources, though the remaining sections of North I-25 do.
Planning documents currently include a proposed commuter rail system from Fort Collins to the north metro area, which would cost more than $1 billion to build.
“There will need to be more revenue if these projects are going to get done,” Lewis said. “And that can be done on a statewide level or a local level. If it’s done on a local level, I fear that there will be pockets of prosperity in a vast sea of need.”
Lewis said there is “more than talk” about a possible statewide referendum to fund transportation via a sales tax increase, he said in December.
“Even Senate Bill 1 recognizes that if a voter referendum is not passed in November, that there will be a legislative referred measure in 2019 to fund more of the projects, so it’s still very much a moving target,” Lewis said.
Kathy Gilliland, former Loveland mayor and City Council member, recalled the planning process for highway-widening measures through the 1990s and early 2000s.
Though a feasibility study for the expansion was completed in 2000, it took until 2011 to get a record of decision from the Federal Highway Administration for the roads to be widened, but then CDOT was left with another problem: funding.
Gilliland represents Larimer, Morgan and Weld counties on the CDOT Transportation Commission, which among its roles advises and makes recommendations to the governor and General Assembly on transportation policy.
Gilliland said that while the Senate bill is helpful, it doesn’t represent any kind of permanent fix to the state’s infrastructure funding problems.
“We don’t want people to get too excited about that, because it’s just a drop in the bucket for what we actually need long-term,” Gilliland said. “We need a funding stream that’s actually going to give us the dollars that we need on an ongoing basis so we can get some of these big, major projects that we have across the state taken care of.”
The town of Johnstown and city of Loveland each agreed to put $6 million into the construction work for the 402 interchange project, and the counties of Larimer and Weld contributed $1 million each. The total project cost is estimated at $295 million.
“We have small communities that have come up with a significant amount of dollars that we know they had to stretch — they’re going to be stretching for years — to make happen,” Gilliland said. “But everybody along this corridor knows how important it is to Northern Colorado.”
As a Northern Colorado native, Mayor Scott James of Johnstown recalled being told that one day, urban sprawl would create a contiguous city north from Denver to Fort Collins.
Such a thing would be an economic engine to support a high quality of life, James said. But it cannot happen without the right infrastructure.
“Now, I am not so delusional as to think that Scheels would be located in the town of Johnstown solely for the 16,000-person population of the town of Johnstown,” James said. “You need a regional economy to fuel a facility like this, and we wouldn’t have that regional economy unless we had that transportation that we’re talking about today.”
Though the $6 million, plus another $2 million, that Johnstown will pay represents a greater per capita obligation than for the other funding partners, James said he is proud that his citizens “have skin in the game.”
“So, folks, welcome to Johnstown; please spend lots of money before you leave, because we’ve got to pay for that,” James said.
Loveland City Council member Dave Clark said he thinks the city’s $6 million investment will be returned by the economic effect of a dependable transportation system. Without local help, the projects would never get done because the federal government does not have money available, he said.
“It’s an economic driver for our region,” he said. “Those $6 million, quite frankly, are going to come back in not too long a time from the regional economic impact it’s going to have — not only tax dollars, but just our quality of life.”
Julia Rentsch: 970-699-5404, jrentsch@reporter-herald.com.