Skis on the roof or on the slope?: Mobility improvement options for the Colorado I-70 Mountain Corridor Tammy Blackburn Paul Kazemersky May 4, 2007

Outline  Problem  Proposed Solutions  Changing Parameters  Costs and Benefits  NPV of Alternatives

I-70 is the only divided highway that crosses Colorado from the east to west Source: Mapquest

I-70 provides access to most of the ski resorts in Colorado and its more populated mountain communities

I-70 sees high levels of congestion

I-70 has several major problem points

Steep cliffs, narrow canyons, and roaring rivers make all mobility improvements more costly and time consuming

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) identified 20 possible solutions to alleviate congestion and accommodate future growth

CDOT believes that 4 billion in 2004 dollars is the upper threshold for capital improvements (millions) CDOT Limit 4,000 Identified Project Funds1, Unfunded Balance2,600

Modes vary in their carrying capacity Source: TranSystems Colorado Maglev Project, J.F. Sato and Associates

The length of improvements vary with the alternatives

What happens with a 4 billion dollar cap?

A 4 billion dollar cap eliminates any multimodal solution for the corridor’s congestion

Instead of using an arbitrary capital cost cap, we evaluated five options of interest using a base case of minimal action

Using an inflator based on the gross domestic product since 2004 we adjusted the cost estimates to 2007 dollars

We adjusted several parameters to gain insight into the sensitivity of CDOT’s findings  Ridership Numbers  Fare Charges

CDOT projected transit fares based on 10¢ a mile per passenger in 2000 dollars

Adjusting fare prices to 2007 dollars brings the base case to 11.7¢ a mile

CDOT made fares less than it would cost a person for just the price of their fuel Travel by Public Transit to and from Summit County with CDOT’s base fare: $9.35*2 = $18.70 Travel by Personal Car to and from Summit County: 160 miles/22.5 mpg = 7.1 gallons 7.1 gallons*$2.90 gallon = $20.59

This suggests that there is some leeway to increase fares that generate additional operating income Fare structure at 13¢ a mile Fare structure at 15¢ a mile

Revenue grows while operating subsidies decline 10 cents/mile 13 cents/mile 15 cents/mile

To differentiate our analysis from CDOT’s we explored ridership numbers CDOT’s Estimate 10% More 20% More

We settled on modeling transit at 10% more passengers traveling for 13 cents/mile

Standing for Cost-Benefit Analysis  Affected County Residents  State Residents  Tourists  Business interests  Local and interstate freight interest

Each alternative has a different ability to accommodate demand

Transit provides growth capacity beyond the study period of CDOT’s analysis

Expansion options preserve existing travel times

Methodology of Ranking Alternatives  Took numbers in 2000 dollars and converted them to 2006 dollars  Then inflated by 3% a year  Applied varying social discount rates and compared it to a constant social discount rate

With a constant NPV, building a highway and preserving a right of way for an Advanced Guideway System has the greatest NPV

Applying different social discount rates on the ability of an alternative to increase capacity leads to a high NPV for multimodal solutions