Northern Front Range Metropolitan Planning
Organization reaches out to who? by
David Wright
As a local activist, a paid one at that, I just had the opportunity to a attend an outreach presented by consultants working for the NFRMPO (Planning Organization). The folks making the presentation were very professional, immensely festooned with wonderful multi-colored visual aids and fully affective in the use of modern-day Power Point. Very impressive. In the crowd there were about twenty folks, the bulk of which were “connected” this including a well informed CDOT employee, two crowd-working State Representatives, myself and about 8 or 9 off-the-street citizens. Not a real big showing for an issue that may one day involve the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The idea of the function, held at the Loveland Chamber of Commerce Building, was to introduce the many facets of future transportation needs of Northern Colorado. After a presentation, we were divided into two groups to work as teams to list what might be our greatest concerns for future transportation needs.
We plugged away and the off-the-streeters penned a fine spattering of the many needs. There was a heavy listing of I 25 interchanges. Interestingly, they listed the need to greatly expand the very dirt road # 5 east of I 25. Other sites recorded were clearly becoming either bottlenecks or were hazards because of shear mass of traffic. .
Then it dawned on me. The out reach program, like most, is a we-care-about-you gambit. All of these fine folks were listing improvements that they sincerely thought would make their travels easier. They were growing tired of the traffic hassles. I said to myself, “You know, 30 years ago the traffic was easy to deal with, 20 years ago it was better than now, even only 5 years ago it wasn’t that bad.” At that moment, I realized that the traffic will never again be better than it is today. (Traffic Postulate #1) It will never improve! It never has. Plus, with diminishing resources--( no one is willing to pay more taxes,) the roads will probably not only not improve, but may deteriorate. After all, the few new improvements completed, will only enable, accommodate and subsidize more growth! Voila, we get more cars--more traffic, more lights.
I wondered why these fine folks were the ones making recommendations, because the new improvements are not really for them. The new roads are actually for the new growth. By implying the roads would get better, it seemed the planners might be laying the ground work for getting the public to pay for them. But if the traffic will only get worse (because of Postulate #1), the public is being set up to pay for making traffic worse----and of course, to enable more rapid growth, which interestingly, by every reasonable survey is the number one concern of local citizens.
I realized then, the group of people who should be hearing this presentation are developers, builders and real estate people. They know where they want new roads and improvements. Then after they make their lists, they should sit down and figure out how THEY will pay for it--and that includes the I 25 interchanges at 30 million a pop. After all, the new improvements are for them. The interchanges were just fine until they needed more capacity or a more adequate public facility. So while the NFRMPO out reach was informative, I think the wrong folks were in attendance. My guess is they had other opportunities.