Improving the drive on North I-25 may come at a personal cost. Part of a plan for money set aside to relieve congestion would add toll lanes on the interstate.
TheNorth Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is made up of 15 representatives of northern Colorado communities voted unanimously to allocate the next 4 years worth of Surface Transportation Funding, about $13 million, for projects solely on I-25.
The four projects could commence in 2015 if given final approval.
Weld county commissioner Sean Conway presented the funding proposal. He said a major part of the plan involves a public private partnership, similar to the controversial contract on Highway 36.
"We will add two new lanes on I-25 between 402, which is basically the Johnson's corner exit, and Harmony. Now they'll be managed lanes, they'll be toll lanes, but its new capacity on the highway," Conway said.
The $13 million would go to the Colorado Department of Transportation and be used to help them leverage other funding, Conway said. The ideal amount of funding would be around $152 million, which would go toward these four projects:
- New truck lane on Berthoud Hill
- Rebuild Crossroads Bridge
- New toll lanes (one northbound, one southbound) on I-25 from Highway 402 (Johnson's Corner) to just north of Harmony Road.
- Mile-long extra lane on the south end of I-25 near the E470 exit and Highway 7.
"These are specific projects, we've identified how much they are going to cost," said Conway. "We can get those done in the next 1 to 3 to 4 years if we use this money that we are given through the taxpayers through the federal government and passed down through the state and apply it to this project."
Conway said CDOT's current schedule for I-25 improvements goes into 2075.
