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Doubtless we will be reading today about traffic jams in the mountains along Interstate 70 during the three-day holiday weekend.
There may have been a time when people figured that you were lucky to get anywhere in our mountains during the winter, let alone meet a schedule, but that time is long past. We expect more these days, and so there are proposals to improve transportation in the corridor between Denver and Glenwood Springs.
The first suggestion is to widen the highway. The good people of Clear Creek County, especially Idaho Springs, are squarely opposed to that, for obvious reasons. They already put up with the noise and pollution from the highway, for little economic benefit, and a wider highway just means more aggravation without compensation.
Improving a highway is also an expensive proposition in the mountains, and that raises a question about who should pay.
Interstate 70 was designed 40 years ago to speed traffic between Denver and Grand Junction. It has evolved into an access route for the intervening ski industry and associated world-class four-season amenity-laden resorts.
Thus any expansion of the highway represents a subsidy for various private enterprises like Vail Resorts.
It might be instructive to observe the behavior of an evil, destructive mining company, as compared to an enlightened modern resort operator, when a similar situation arose.
Back in the 1970s, Climax Molybdenum needed to expand its tailings ponds in Mayflower Gulch on the west side of Frémont Pass. The expansion meant that State Highway 91, which runs south from Wheeler Junction (now generally known as Copper Mountain), would need to be re-routed.
Climax did not involve the state treasury in its actions. It built a new highway, at a cost of millions, to state specifications, and the mining company paid the bill.
That seems like a good precedent -- if a company needs a bigger highway so that it can continue or expand its business, then the company should pay for the highway. Thus if Vail Resorts needs a bigger highway, Vail Resorts should pay for it.
If Climax could pay its own way, why can't Vail?
That proposal is consistent and logical, which means it has no chance of getting serious consideration in Colorado, which supports private enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.
That may also explain why a totally illogical I-70 proposal still remains on the table. Earlier this month, a legislative committee had a chance to kill the Intermountain Fixed Guideway Authority, but it didn't.
The fixed guideway
is a 170-mile
magnetic-levitation elevated train that would extend from
Denver International Airport to Eagle County Airport. To
quote from the authority's website, The monorail would
be propelled by a new version of a linear induction
motor,
which has yet to be proved in regular daily
service.
Now, I'm all for research. But I don't think Colorado taxpayers ought to be investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build something based on unproven technology.
Edward S. Wright doesn't think so, either. He lives in the metro area, and he's an engineer with an impressive resume. He has written a book, SMARTrans: Sensible Mountain Area Railway Transport, that explains his solution for I-70.
Wright looks at Switzerland, another mountainous region with many winter travelers, and proposes that Colorado adopt the Swiss solution -- electric-powered trains that work reliably year-round in the Alps.
The track would be meter-gauge,
just a little
wider than our traditional three-foot narrow-gauge, but
offering the same benefits of being able to make sharper
curves and use lighter rolling stock.
What of our steep grades? Wouldn't expensive tunnels be required? Wright says we can get around that by using cog-wheel traction, rather than regular adhesive traction, in the steep spots, and that the electric locomotives can be configured to provide both.
He offers a host of other advantages, from use of proposed RTD trackage to flexibility in operation. He concedes that this isn't a high-speed operation, but a reliable 50 mph is faster than gridlock on a 75-mph highway.
Wright's proposal appears to be pretty well thought out -- his book is clear and easy for a non-engineer to read -- and it certainly deserves a place at the table if Colorado persists in looking for ways to subsidize Vail Resorts.
After all, it was a network of narrow-gauge railroads in the mountains that built Colorado's 19th-century industrial economy. A network of modern narrow-gauge rail transport might well be the most sensible adaptation to the major mountain industry of the 21st century.
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