SB 108, the so-called FASTER plan to fund road and bridge repairs, is just a couple of minor procedural steps from hitting Gov. Bill Ritter’s desk for a signature after the state House of Representatives passed it 34-31 on final reading Wednesday.
Local rail and public transit enthusiasts are in for a cold slap of reality after the historic signing of the $787 billion economic recovery plan.
During Tuesday’s visit to Denver with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden said the federal stimulus bill will be a big boost to mass transit in the United States, with funding impacts for commuter rail projects from Colorado to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
State Sen. Dan Gibbs (D-Dillon) took his controversial transportation-funding bill on the road over the weekend, trying to get out in front a fickle public largely unwilling to increase taxes for road and bridge fixes in recent years.
Lawmakers, after initially singing Kumbaya on a transportation funding bill that would raise vehicle registration fees to pay for road and bridge repairs, went their bipartisan ways late Wednesday when the possibility of tolling on existing roads was reintroduced.
That prompted a Democrat-led state Senate vote of approval by a 19-16 party-line margin late Wednesday, and a mass exodus by Republicans.
Senate Republicans and Democrats smoked a peace pipe Wednesday in their heated debate over a transportation funding bill called FASTER (Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery).
State lawmakers continue to be divided along party lines on a controversial Senate bill that would raise vehicle registration fees $32 a year to pay for badly needed road and bridge repairs.
The bill’s main impact would be to boost vehicle registration fees $32 annually, raising a little over $200 million in its first year to fund badly needed road and bridge repairs, including the state’s 126 structurally deficient bridges. It’s cruising through the statehouse under the catchy slogan-title Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery or FASTER.
The version of the stimulus bill currently being considered by the U.S. Senate contains nearly $14 million more in transportation infrastructure funding for Colorado than the version passed by the House last week. Some lawmakers say that’s still not enough.
Calling the final figure “a moving target,” CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman on Monday provided an analysis that showed the Senate version would make available $425.7 million for state transportation infrastructure projects, while the House version comes in at about $412 million.
With all the caterwauling about the real or feigned economic firepower of the federal transportation stimulus package, here’s something you can take to the bank — lousy roads are costing local drivers a pile of money.
If you’re looking for innovation in Colorado’s share of the Obama administration’s stimulus package, you’re likely to be disappointed in what some transportation officials are calling “a jobs bill.”
Most of the $520 million in new spending headed this way will be pumped into much-needed and “shovel-ready” paving projects and repairs for bridges and interchanges that have been put off for years in the face of shrinking federal and state highway budgets.
Colorado’s engineering community was preaching to the choir as the state Legislature convened its first session of 2009 Wednesday. The engineers released a report card that gave the state’s transportation infrastructure a pitiful D+ and warned that it would drop to a near-failing D by 2010 if dramatic action wasn’t taken.
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