< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
What are we going to do about Interstate 70? The ski industry is whining that visitor-days dropped in the season just past, partly because the superhighway of the mountains was closed more often than usual. When it wasn't closed, it was congested, bumper-to-bumper chain collisions from Avon to Wheatridge on some Sunday afternoons.
It's odd that no critic of government subsidy programs
has examined the ski industry. Generally it operates on
public land. It often expects public assistance (called
affordable housing programs
) in paying its chattels.
The industry hollered about the loss of the tourism tax to
help it pay for its marketing.
And now this industry complains that it's not getting enough assistance from the Colorado Department of Transportation. It is not enough that we have provided the land, housed the underpaid workers and promoted the wonders of schussing through fresh powder -- we've got to put a few billion into highway expansion, too.
But there's no point in complaining. The I70 problem has to be solved, especially if you live in Denver, even if you never venture west of Federal Boulevard.
Why? Unless you want to pay off the bonds for Denver International Airport, the money will have to come from the landing fees charged to airlines. You have a financial interest in encouraging more planes to land at DIA.
If I70 is closed on account of weather or the resulting jack-knifed semis, or if the highway is so congested that the two-hour jaunt from baggage carousel to the base of the lifts becomes a six-hour travail, then skiers will go someplace else, or they'll take another route.
More and more often, they're taking another route -- bypassing Denver and I70 altogether as they fly directly to the mountain resorts from Dallas or Chicago or Los Angeles. Last winter, a quarter of the visitor traffic to Eagle County resorts (Vail, Beaver Creek, Arrowhead) arrived via such direct flights, up from 15 percent in 1993-94.
If that trend continues, the loss of this revenue stream could mean serious financial problems for DIA.
Denver's possible solutions are fairly limited. Given that the U.S. Secretary of Transportation is Federico Pena, a former mayor of Denver with an intense interest in making DIA a success, the city might be able to persuade the feds that there are serious safety hazards at mountain airports, thereby preserving the DIA-I70 access monopoly.
But that might not work, because the ski resorts, often owned by big corporations like Ralston-Purina, enjoy potent political connections of their own.
Other options might sound good at first, but fade when confronted with reality. Limits on heavy truck traffic? Not with our legislature. Public transit? Great idea -- other people can use it, and that will leave more room for me to drive my car. High-occupancy lanes? Creates a privileged class of motorists, and Colorado for Family Values will be in court arguing that it's unconstitutional. Passenger rail? We rip out tracks in this country; we don't lay them.
So the city has no real choice but to support expanding I70 through the mountains -- eight lanes to slide across on Floyd Hill, triple-decker interchange at the forks of Clear Creek so that drunken gamblers can take a real plunge, another Straight Creek bore to join the Eisenhower and Johnson tunnels.
(Years ago, when Colorado Republicans had a sense of
humor, they proposed that one tube honor a former GOP
governor as the Tunnel of Love.
)
Fortunately, not only Denver and the resorts will profit from an expanded I70. The benefits will spread throughout the state.
As it is, only those towns within about 40 miles of the interstate enjoy the blessings of housing a commuter population which has no real interest in the place they live. These once-deprived localities get to be part of mainstream America: Kremmling as a suburb of Dillon, Fairplay a suburb of Breckenridge, Leadville a suburb of Vail, Buena Vista a suburb of Copper Mountain, Paonia a suburb of Aspen -- just like the rest of our great Republic of alienated commuters who live in one place and work in another.
The unfortunate mountain towns outside this swath of homogeneity suffer from the travail of pedestrians, community involvement, local lore, non-franchised enterprises -- all sorts of out-of-date eccentricities that prevent them from functioning properly as parts of the great modern machine.
A bigger I70 will widen the swath of normalization to 60 or 80 miles on each side, thereby bringing a great deal more of Colorado into the modern world. Why should the Salidas and Waldens of this great state be left out?
Throw in the delights of more crime, broader pollution and consequent emission inspections, increased real-estate profits from cookie-cutter subdivisions in hay meadows, more national chains to export profits, and you can see that all of us, no matter where we live in Colorado, will benefit from a bigger and better I70.
It's either that or watch DIA go broke.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >