I visited Fort Collins, Colorado for the first time ever this past weekend. (Thanks, Sam & Mike!) I’m still musing over the combination of parks and sprawl. In a short 20 minute drive across town, we passed several city parks on our way to this new park, Fossil Creek. Great facility, and it was busy on a sunny Sunday around lunchtime. The surrounding sprawl — lots of new houses and developments around the city, not just in this area — isn’t offensive. The houses are nice, if not unique. American commercial development isn’t really a surprise to anyone anymore: we have the space, in most places, so we fill it. Yet it’s striking for just how repetitive different developments can be. In many cases, these tracts are the same generation. Time heals most wounds, and what’s really telling between older and newer developments is how the thickness of the trees gives away the depth of the community’s roots. I saw saplings and old growth, but rarely in the same place.
Overall, I was impressed. Fort Collins has a history, a large university, a location tucked up against the foothills, and a pattern of development that encourages (or requires) numerous bicycle lanes and parks of various shapes and sizes. The downtown has some life and diversity. While I didn’t get a chance to see much of the university, I like the human energy that gathers around big educational institutions. It’s not always well directed, but there are guaranteed to be some interesting people and diversions which become part of the community at large. I’ll be curious to learn more over time, as I’m likely to visit again.
On a separate (related?) note, I travelled e-470 twice during the trip from and to the airport. The road has its own website because, well, the road is a private toll road. I guess these are more and more common around the country (or so I’ve read), but this was my first experience. Friday night, 10pm… empty. No one else willing to pay the ~$4 toll, I guess. Is this really the way of the future? From the FAQ:
Will E-470 reduce the tolls or offer discount tolls?
Our per mile toll costs are in line with other brand new start up toll roads constructed in the last decade.æ Our construction costs and debt payments are much higher since we are paying much higher costs for materials and labor today, compared to the older toll roads built in the 1950’s and 1960’s.æ E-470 currently has $1.2 billion in debt, over $3 billion with interest.ææ Traffic and revenue analysis have shown that reducing the tolls or granting discounts at this time, will not guarantee the increase in drivers that E-470 would need, to collect the revenue necessary to pay our bonds.æ Having opened the newest section of our road in January 2003, we can now go about watching the growth of traffic and attempt to estimate at what point the new segment is achieving its forecasted traffic levels.æ At the point we reach these levels, we will analyze alternative pricing models, including toll elasticity to demand analysis, hoping to offer some alternatives to our daily customers.æ We won’t begin these studies until 2004.
When will the bonds be paid and toll removed?
The bonds are scheduled to be paid off in approximately 2035 and after E-470 has established a perpetual maintenance fund to take care of E-470.æ At that time, the tolls will end and the road will be turned over to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
“Toll elasticity to demand analysis”??? So much for Eisenhower’s legacy, the true military gift to our nation… highways to connect us all. (Current version = the internet.) Now, instead of public investment for the greater good, for later privatization (perhaps), we’re starting with privatization and then transferring ownership to the public at a later date. I hope the private organizations which are created for these purposes don’t gain the power of Robert Moses’s Triborough Bridge Authority in New York City, even if that organization has been subsumed by the MTA. (You have read The Power Broker, haven’t you? You must!) Only time will tell, but I sure felt like I was in different world, between the parks, the sprawl, and the toll road.