Opinion: Transportation funding — facing the issues


Boulder is facing some major issues for its transportation system, including growth issues, capacity issues, funding issues, and energy issues. Although the developed part of Boulder has very little vacant land, the potential for redevelopment is still huge. Some planning estimates envision 60,000-plus more jobs to “reasonable buildout” on top of the current 50-70,000 in-commuters (the exact number is uncertain), plus many thousands more new residents. Our major streets are close to capacity, as we notice at rush hour or with the fall influx of students. At the recent council transportation study session, city staff outlined millions of dollars of annual needs that will not be met unless additional funding is provided. Finally, transportation accounts for over 20 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions.
If we are not going to go the way of most cities, and end up with traffic jams on potholed streets, a lot of money will have to be invested and new regulations will have to be instituted. Who will pay and how? Will it be a general tax, or some form of user fee? Will new development be required to offset the traffic it generates, or will the general public be expected to bear that burden? And over the long term, will we actually attempt to maintain a reasonable level of mobility, or will we let things gradually gridlock?
From a statewide perspective, roughly 20 percent of transportation funding is user fees (gas tax, tolls, RTD tickets and passes, etc.) The rest is from general taxes in one form or another. So our whole system in effect subsidizes travel. And we also subsidize growth; its impacts are usually dealt with after the fact by raising taxes on everyone, if they are dealt with at all.
I’m in favor of having auto use directly pay more of its costs, so for me, the first step would be to implement some form of user fee to cover the operating deficit, rather than the general assessment that the city staff and the Transportation Advisory Board proposed. The most obvious approach would be a parking charge in commercial/employment areas and residential areas where commuters park. This would provide an incentive to bike, use transit, or car-pool. Even a $2/day charge, if paid by only 10,000 vehicles and only on workdays, would yield over $4 million a year, more than enough to meet the identified short-term deficit. To keep things fair, private lots should charge the same. If the city cannot require this, then a hefty fee per space could be imposed on those not charging for parking, which would provide a strong incentive to get with the program. I suspect that CU and the federal labs, although possibly not subject to city jurisdiction, might also support such an approach.
To address the huge long term impacts from new development, the Adequate Public Facilities (APF) approach is probably the best solution. Typically, a city would levy an impact fee (a water tap fee is an example of an impact fee) to pay for new facilities adequate to maintain the current “level of service.” But some years ago the legislature constrained impact fees so they could only be used to pay for capital facilities; this won’t work in Boulder, because adding transportation capacity would likely be done by increasing transit, car pools, etc. So we would have to rely on another legal strategy, as was developed in Fort Collins, where the city has the power to deny development permits unless there are “adequate public facilities.”
The effect of APF would be similar to the “net zero” energy requirement that ought to be in place for new buildings in that new development would be required to offset any new vehicle trips by equivalent reductions elsewhere. If the council desires to reduce the burden on new development, some additional parking charge revenues could also be allocated to maintaining current levels of service. Actually measuring how many trips are offset is tricky, but we have enough areas that are exclusively employment that reasonable monitoring could be done using control gates.
Dealing with these issues now will be a lot easier than playing catch-up in the future. Perhaps this council will be the one to finally do it.


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