Public investment in highway efficiency should always be the first priority for transportation funding, so long as there are still significant gains to be made. For example, there is no question that improved traffic flow at the Entrance to Aspen, and possibly other locations along the Highway 82 corridor, would save more fuel than an increase in bus service.
In addition, and unlike those transit expenditures which only benefit bus riders, highway upgrades benefit 100 percent of the traveling public, improving our experience regardless of whether we are using private vehicles or public transportation.
It is a huge missed opportunity that RFTA does not exercise its full potential to plan for, propose, and fund highway based transportation solutions. Projects as diverse as the Entrance to Aspen, Glenwood Springs bypass, or grade separated access to Basalt could move forward regardless of state funding delays, and would set us up for future reimbursements from the state that could then be applied to transit services.
It is doubly sad that the RFTA board could not bring itself to even discuss the possibility of creating a petition process as part of their charter so that private citizens could propose plans and funding options to present to the voters.
When advocates for a new Entrance to Aspen were sent packing by the RFTA board, petition organizers pursued the second best option and proposed a Pitkin County road fund property tax that prioritized spending to deal with the worst problem first. While the RFTA sales tax proposal would have required the creation of a petition process from scratch, citizens of Pitkin County already have the right of petition, as established by the state constitution.
For whatever that’s worth.
It is not credible that the county clerk and county attorney believe that the Pitkin County Charter supersedes the state constitution, but that’s what they claimed in rejecting the proposed road tax petitions. They took a purely political stand in order to protect the county’s own property tax proposal from having to face a competing ballot question offered by citizens.
Commitment to democracy among area officials extends only far enough to allow us to pick from their list of choices. The collateral damage of their collective mindset against direct democracy has been the suppression of common sense proposals that achieve their own stated objectives more effectively than the policies and projects they currently support.
*This space was originally intended for “Discussing Mass Transit Part V – What is RFTA Proposing?”, but RFTA is still working on whatever they are about to propose. We pause from that series long enough to offer this background information.