Improving our public transportation system helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. photo © CEC

Colorado is facing a transportation crisis, both in the amount of funding available to maintain our current system and in the way we spend that money. Our state’s population is growing at one of the fastest paces in the country, and the number of miles we drive is increasing at twice the rate of population. At the same time, the gas tax that has traditionally raised money to pay for our transportation system has been stagnant since 1992.

What this gives us is an unsustainable situation - more people driving more miles, putting more strain on our roads and bridges as well as our environment, contrasted with a funding source that has not even kept up with inflation for the last 17 years and outdated funding priorities. This has created immense pressure on our roads and highways in the form of traffic congestion and crumbling bridges, and on our environment in terms of the global warming and air pollution caused by all the driving Coloradans have been doing.

The traditional approach of raising gas taxes to add more lanes to existing roads will not solve either of these problems. Both experience and research show we cannot build our way out of congestion; as soon as new lanes open traffic increases to fill them, putting us right back where we started- sitting in traffic. Further, adding more lanes will just cause people to drive more and more, further exacerbating our global warming crisis.

We need a revolution in the way we think about, plan for and fund our transportation system. We need to fund and build a smarter, more sustainable transportation future with modern and affordable public transportation choices, safe places to walk and bicycle, smarter highways that use technology and tolling to better manage congestion, land use policies that reduce travel demand by locating more affordable housing near jobs and services, and long-distance rail networks to help people travel long distances efficiently. These things can help us to reduce our oil dependency, slow climate change, and create a vibrant new economy.

Our greatest opportunity to effect a sea change on this issue is through the reauthorization of the federal transportation law, which controls how federal money will be spent on transportation for the next six years. The current law expired in 2009, but Congress has passed patchwork extensions of it while dealing with the health care debate. We hope to see Congress pick this up again in 2010.

For more information on the reauthorization of the federal bill, click here.