One of the fastest-growing areas of Colorado is the Denver-Boulder corridor, a three-county area centered around US 36. Regional forecasts project 28 percent population growth in the US 36 corridor by 2035, combined with stunning employment growth of 53 percent. US 36 already carries between 80,000 and 100,000 daily vehicle trips and operates at nearly 90 percent of capacity. Regional leaders have long been concerned about the social, environmental, and fiscal impacts of delaying critical new capacity to this corridor: the economic costs of tightening congestion, declining air quality, growing expense of maintaining crumbling bridges and roadway, reduced mobility, and decreased quality of life for everyone in the Denver metro area who depends on US 36 every day. Further, the inflationary costs of construction, materials, and labor mean the price tag to upgrade US 36 would only increase with every passing year. Simply put, Colorado could not wait for a traditional solution to finance and construct improvements to US 36.
Solution:
A public-private procurement process initiated in 2012 selected Plenary Roads Denver to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain new express lanes and rehabilitate existing general-purpose lanes on the corridor. In return, Plenary will receive toll revenues from the express lanes, sharing them with the state when its investment is paid off. The first phase of the project opened in July 2015, and the final phase is due in early 2016.
A report commissioned by the Colorado State Auditor’s Office and completed in spring 2015 concluded that HPTE’s US 36 public-private partnership with Plenary had overall provided the best value for taxpayers based upon the goals set by the project partners: improve mobility, shift financial risk from CDOT and state taxpayers, and shift operations and maintenance responsibilities to the private sector.
The project is the Colorado Department of Transportation’s first public-private partnership (P3).