Environmentalists oppose freeway
plan
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Allen Best
February 15, 2005
The Sierra Club's Rocky Mountain Chapter has formally
opposed plans favored by state highway officials for Interstate 70 from Denver
into the mountains.
Buses adhering to rails, the idea advanced by state transportation planners, is
opposed by the Sierra Club, which instead wants more conventional trains.
As well, the national environmental group favors widening of Interstate 70 only
where pinch points impair safety, not the more general widening of I-70 to six
lanes through Clear Creek County envisioned by the Colorado Department of
Transportation, familiarly known by its acronym, CDOT.
This adversarial position suggests a girding of positions by groups lining up on
the twin issues of economics and the environment. Two nagging questions underlie
the debate.
First is the great uncertainty of both the cost and feasibility of various
mass-transit systems. And second, how tolerable are the environmental impacts of
more highway widening?
Ski area operators want to see more immediate answers to congestion in terms of
wider highways, while Clear Creek County and various environmental advocates
have consistently called for a longer-term and possibly more expensive vision
that embraces some kind of rail-based transportation.
Taking the bus
Among the state's set of six concepts is the idea of laying down rails in the
median from the outskirts of Denver to the Eisenhower Tunnel.
Buses, which could be electrically powered, would be specially outfitted to
glide on the rail. There would be two lanes for buses in the median from Denver
to the tunnel. From the tunnel to Silverthorne there would be just one lane.
Critics have said that buses are too old-fashioned to win many riders. But
Cecilia Joy, the former project manager for the I-70 project, says the buses
offer greater flexibility.
At Silverthorne, the buses could go to dispersed locations such as Breckenridge,
Vail, and even Steamboat Springs. Too, if they are electric, they are quieter
and cause less localized air pollution, offering an environmental benefit.
In the case of accidents, buses could use normal traffic lanes.
Finally, the operating costs of such a bus system would be only $20 million to
$30 million annually, a third to a fourth of what the state's transportation
planners estimated would be necessary for conventional rail or monorail.
Rail-based buses currently operate in Melbourne, Australia, but in no place
comparable to the mountain stretch I-70.
"That's one of the challenge is that it hasn't been
used very often, although it is operating, whereas some of those advanced
guideway systems, they're either at the blueprint stage or they're going through
the final phase of testing. But to retrofit them to I-70 would be a whole new
challenge," Joy said.
The state analysis estimated the cost of a fixed-guideway system, including a
monorail, at $5.6 billion, well over the $4 million that state officials
estimated can be rounded up for I-70 work in coming years. The bus idea does not
come cheap, either, with estimates running from $3.2 billion to $3.6 billion.
But Bert Melcher, a Sierra Club representative, faults the state analysis.
"We do not feel that CDOT has examined the best possible rail
options," he said.
He also said that the club's task force believes a rail-based mass transit can
be built in phases, containing the cost below $2 billion. Committing to highway
widening in Clear Creek County now excludes rapid mass transit in the future, he
said.
Slow down?
Previously, Melcher had voiced general support for the state's bus idea. As
such, the formal position is a significant turnaround.
"We gave it the benefit of the doubt," he said of
his previous support. Now, he is persuaded that the buses would not capture a
strong ridership.
The Sierra Club also says CDOT failed to make environmental costs the crux of
its analysis. Blasting more lifts, impairing the air quality, and threatening
the health of people living along the freeway makes the environmental
considerations of more magnitude than the monetary cost, he said.
Finally, the Sierra Club faults the preliminary environmental analysis, which
was released earlier this winter, for failing to identify a "vision' of
what the mountains will be for future generations, the Sierra Club said.
"How much mountain sprawl do we want? How much pavement do we want? How
many parking lots do we want?" the group said in a press release.
"These issues need to be resolved before any irreversible highway
construction is approved."
Melcher said it would be better to slow the process even more while communities
assess the impacts of yet more access, whether by allowing more cars or
providing mass transit, than to plunge forward.
The Sierra Club has 20,000 members in Colorado, half of them in metropolitan
Denver.