Feds give US 36 project $10 million, short of CDOT goal of $200 million

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

The U.S. Department of Transportation is giving a $10 million grant toward extending the U.S. 36 bus-car pool lanes and adding toll-paying solo drivers – far short of the $200 million the state sought but allowing work to proceed incrementally.

The Colorado Department of Transportation, with its partners in the project between Westminster and Boulder, Now must decided whether to use the grant to get a small part of the $260 million project started, or leverage it into a federal loan that could be repaid with toll revenue.

The grant comes from a special $1.5 billion pool of federal stimulus money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The program, called TIGER grants for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery. was a competition that considered innovative approaches, inclusion of multi-modal transportation elements and participating by multiple jurisdictions. More than $56.5 million in total requests for 1,380 projects were submitted.

Only 51 were funded nationwide. Many of them were port facility improvements and freight rail corridor projects. You can read the entire list of projects that received grants by clicking here.

Out of the 30 projects submitted from Colorado for funding from the feds’ TIGER program, the U.S. 36 project was the only one selected.

“While it is not as much as we requested, very few projects received their full request,” the corridor’s transportation advocacy group US 36 Commuting Solutions said in a statement. “We hope this commitment is a first step in obtaining additional federal funding through future grant opportunities, including authorization of the current federal transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU.”

CDOT, the lead agency on the project, scaled the work into pieces to better its chances for funding. It asked for $100 million to extend the existing lanes from their current western point at Federal Boulevard in Westminster to Wadsworth Boulevard in Broomfield. Alternatively, it asked for $200 million to continue extending the new lanes to Interlocken. Read the executive summary of the project here.

The grant program also allows the state to add to the project by using the proceeds to applying for a federal infrastructure “challenge grant” for up to one-third of total project costs from the same program that recently helped finance reconstruction of Denver Union Station. CDOT can accept the grant and use it directly on project costs, or use it to pay the subsidy and administrative costs for federal credit assistance in the form of a direct loan, loan guarantee or line of credit.

“In the coming days, CDOT and its partners, the Regional Transportation District and local government agencies along the corridor, will learn more about the TIFIA (Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act) Challenge Grant and determine if this is a feasible option to complete the funding for this major corridor improvement project,” CDOT said in a statement. “The decision will also help determine how the $10 million will be used to improve the congested corridor.”

CDOT and its partners have to factor into that decision just how far $10 million will carry the work. It is not likely to be a great distance. In addition to construction of one new lane in each direction, the grant may be used for a commuter bikeway and an intelligent transportation system for toll collection and incident management.

“Every state is facing transportation challenges and the TIGER grant program was designed to help our nation address some of the most critical needs while helping our economy,” said Gov. Bill Ritter. “We are very excited that the U.S. DOT has acknowledged U.S. 36 as one of the 51 most important and most valuable projects in the country right now.”

RTD has FasTracks money dedicated to the project. The lanes would be used by its buses as part of FasTracks’ only non-rail corridor, Bus Rapid Transit on U.S. 36. RTD’s FasTracks budget has $208.5 million allocated to the Bus Rapid Transit’s Phase 2, extending the lanes toward Boulder. Up to $30 million of that was earmarked to match the TIGER grant. CDOT likewise pledged $30 million.

Had the TIGER grant been fully funded, together with the CDOT and RTD funds, that would have covered the estimated $160 million to $260 million cost of the two alternative scopes of work. Total improvements to the entire U.S. 36 corridor are estimated to cost $1.3 billion and are expected to be built in multiple phases.

Criteria for awarding the grants included having innovative, multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional components for projects that stood to yield significant economic and environmental benefits.

The U.S. 36 project fills that bill. In addition to FasTracks’ enhanced bus service, the lanes would be used by car pools and by toll-paying solo drivers feeding into the Interstate 25 Express Toll Lanes.
CDOT’s I-25 Express Lanes, which allow toll paying solo drivers to bypass I-25 congestion by paying a toll scaled higher during rush hours and as low as 50 cents at other times, have been used more than projected, and without causing any slowdown in the free-flow condition of the dedicated bus and car-pool lanes.

Adding the toll element to U.S. 36 permits CDOT to finance lane expansion at a time when funding for new free lanes cannot be found. Named the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, the segment from I-25 to Boulder was Colorado’s original toll road. It opened in 1952, and the tolls were removed in 1967 after the revenue paid off the bonds that financed it.