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Stranger things may have happened somewhere, sometime. But here it is an election year, and our state legislature is talking seriously about raising taxes -- maybe the income tax or sales tax, but almost certainly the gasoline tax.
Every time you buy a gallon of gasoline, the state now collects 12 cents. That money, about $113 million last year, maintains existing highways and finances new ones.
It isn't enough. Of the 9,210 miles of state highway, about 35 percent is so cracked and pitted that major reconstruction is necessary. Another 40 percent needs repaving; only 25 percent is now in good shape.
There just isn't enough money to maintain existing highways, let alone the new roads that will be required as Colorado's population continues to grow. Thus the argument that the gasoline tax should be raised to 23 cents per gallon.
However, Colorado has enough economic problems as it is. Improving our roads would just make things worse.
Tourism is one of our largest industries. People do not travel to New England to marvel at the concrete overpasses of Interstate 93; they go there to admire quaint, narrow and obsolete covered bridges. It works the same way here. The Mousetrap may be a marvelous example of modern engineering, but it's certainly no tourist attraction. People would rather gawk at Mosquito Pass or a narrow-gauge railroad.
All Colorado really has is scenery. How much do you really see when you whiz by at 65 mph, with the traffic demanding your total attention? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to stop and look around more often? I know that I never really appreciated the beauties of Glenwood Canyon until last summer. Always before, traffic was moving and I was too busy to enjoy the panorama. I was scared even to pull over, and this problem will be worse once it is four-laned.
A carload of tourists will then be able to manage the 447 miles of Interstate 70 from Kanorado to the Utah line in eight or nine hours. They'll buy a tank of gas and a meal. And that's it.
If our roads were worse, the same trip might require two or three days. The consequent profits to our motels and restaurants would be just the start of the economic benefits from rotten highways.
Deteriorating roads, full of potholes and bereft of shoulders, are hard on cars, so they break down more often. What better way to encourage small-town entrepreneurs, especially tire and front-end shops?
Bad highways also cause more accidents, providing a massive infusion of medical-insurance dollars to sparsely-populated areas. More money in an area means more doctors, faster ambulances and better hospitals; in short, a vast improvement in rural health care at absolutely no cost to the taxpayers. Who could be against that?
There's another social and economic benefit to rural areas. On many occasions, I have heard small-town merchants complain about the money that leaves town because local residents sometimes drive off to Denver to shop. If the highways got worse, a great deal more money would stay in Colorado's beleaguered small towns.
Metropolitan Denver would also benefit if we spent less money on highways. Even though the urban freeways approach gridlock every weekday afternoon, people still drive.
But if the population continued to grow, and no new highways were built, driving would soon become totally impractical, perhaps even impossible. That would force people to find other ways to get to and from work. Auto emissions would plummet. The toxic Brown Cloud would vanish.
The choice will soon be before the Colorado General Assembly. They can raise the gas tax, and our economy can continue to deteriorate. Or they could quit wasting money on highways, and we could all become healthy and rich.
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