Article Published: Sunday, March 13, 2005

Proposed plains highway takes a toll on neighbors

By Chuck Plunkett
Denver Post Staff Writer

Elbert - Before Harlan Williams bought his land 14 years ago, he had to use cross-country skis to get there for a look.

Like many of his far-flung neighbors, he and his wife, Sylvia, moved out to this high prairie and bought up as many acres of ranch land as they could afford, to insulate themselves from the cities and the suburbs and the sprawl.

They brag about the poor condition of the roads.

Out here - on the wide-open land east of the Front Range, where folks say you can sit on your deck and hear your neighbor talking a quarter-mile away, where at night the stars and cries of coyotes fill the void - there is the feeling that the metro region's congestion and its trains and its smog are its own making, and its own problem.

But now residents face the prospect that a major toll road could come roaring through the heart of their rural paradise.

"If we wanted noise and a highway, we would've moved to Denver," Sylvia says.

For the Williamses and many of their neighbors, it is a nightmare that a private company wants to build the 210-mile Front Range Toll Road, which would feature a high-speed highway and two sets of tracks for coal and freight trains.

Some call it "The Super Slab."

The project has galvanized communities east of Interstate 25, which vow to fight it with all they have.

But these opponents represent a fraction of the population that deals with highway congestion and the nearly 30 trains a day that cruise up and down the Front Range.

"I think that that's a great project, because everything doesn't have to come through downtown Denver," says Thornton Mayor Noel Busck. "There's a great savings of money and a great savings of time."

As much as 60 percent of the I-25-corridor train traffic could be diverted, truckers are expressing interest in the plan, and the state's Tolling Enterprise director said the alternate roadway could be exciting - particularly because its backers promise to build the $2 billion project without using public money.

But out east, they say that the plan's visionary, Ray Wells, has some nerve - and that he is going to need it.

Wells easily won support in the state's House of Representatives last month for legislation he says is important to his project.

But when the debate over the proposed toll road reconvenes at the state Capitol later this month, it won't be quiet.

At a town meeting in Elizabeth in Elbert County recently, one resident challenged the crowd to organize 1,000 residents to storm the upcoming Senate Transportation Committee meeting and speak their minds. The meeting is set for March 22.

Additional town meetings in Elbert County, as well as in El Paso and Arapahoe counties, are echoing that challenge.

Wells, meanwhile, tries to calm their fears.

"It's not a whim, and it's not something that came out of a mad drug deal," Wells told the crowd at an Elizabeth middle-school auditorium.

Dressed in black, standing with arms across his chest, he fielded questions for more than two hours - a performance he has repeated several more times before several more crowds.

"I don't blame some of you for feeling like we're here to ram something over you," he said.

"We have a right to, within reason, build a facility."

Planning began in 1988

For nearly 20 years, Wells, prominent among private developers in Colorado, has been trying to realize his dream of building the privately owned and operated alternative to I-25.

Back from a successful battle with cancer, Wells, at 71, is determined to see it through.

In 1988, he incorporated a partnership under a toll-road law from the mining days of the 1870s. The filing grants him access to a 12-mile-wide corridor that runs several miles east of I-25 from Pueblo to Fort Collins.

Somewhere inside that corridor - he's not yet said exactly where - Wells would build a 660-foot-wide road and rail system that could also combine utilities.

Though Wells insists he would avoid using it, state law gives him the power to condemn the land of any landowners who try to stand in his way.

"We want to avoid as much conflict as we can possibly avoid," he told the crowd of skeptics. Any land that was condemned would be purchased at fair market value, Wells said.

The mastermind is asking the legislature to amend the state's laws to allow the state's Tolling Enterprise to set rates for multi-county toll roads.

Wells told residents that he would continue pursuing the project even if the amendment died in the legislature.

He stood by the assertion in an interview last week, saying the project is vital for the long-term health of the region.

"I'm doing it for the state of Colorado," Wells says. "There are a few of us left who happen to believe this is one hell of a nice place to live."

And though not without risk, experts say, a toll road, if run effectively, can be a cash cow.

News of the plan took communities like Elbert by surprise.

Though some natives and longtime residents were aware of Wells' plan, the majority of those who have been buying up property inside the corridor during the last 20 years were unaware of it.

"Why didn't this show up on a title search?" is a frequent refrain from landowners nervous about Wells' plan.

The state's laws don't require that property owners be notified about Wells' claim.

"I would have liked to have known that this was in the works," Elizabeth Sexton told Wells at the meeting in Elizabeth.

The event co-organizer continued: "There's a little bit of an injustice in this."

"Dumb growth" feared

Environmentalists have concerns as well.

Though Wells says the project is not intended to create new shopping meccas and subdivisions, many worry that the roadway would be a new engine for uncontrolled growth.

"We're worried this (could be) the biggest example of dumb growth that you could imagine," says Matt Baker, executive director of Environment Colorado.

Baker and other environmentalists have met with Wells and asked him to put in writing a list of promises that would provide safeguards against sprawl.

"Wait a minute," Wells says, noting that no other roadway has been subjected to that kind of enforcement. "This gets a little bit like extortion."

The environmentalists' wish list includes conducting additional impact studies, giving public planning agencies some voice in the road's placement, guaranteeing that the space along the roadway could not be used for development, and limiting the number of interchanges to Wells' promised 13.

So far, Wells has not provided those assurances.

Should he do so, Baker says, the environmental lobby would not stand in his way.

However, Baker and other opponents of sprawl say they would prefer a pair of plans under review at the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The first would redirect 60 percent of the Front Range rail traffic much farther east.

The second would expand an existing highway - also farther to the east - that would enhance a north-south bypass of the metro area without building a new corridor.

If Wells' project were to be built, the alternate rail plan, at least, would almost certainly be scrapped, says CDOT freight traffic expert Tom Mauser.

But the highway plan, known as Ports To Plains, could coexist with Wells' plan, says CDOT's Mehdi Baziar, who has studied that proposal.

"They are way too far apart" to compete, Baziar says.

Reducing rail traffic from the Front Range appeals to many who live along its path.

"If it can move the coal trains out on the plains rather than going through the heart of development and communities, I think that's a positive," says Arvada City Councilwoman Lorraine Anderson.

In Longmont, where trains often tie up rush-hour traffic, City Councilman Doug Brown says moving at least the rail traffic is an idea long overdue.

"For Longmont, I only see it as an advantage," he says.

But Brown and other Front Range leaders, such as Denver City Councilman Rick Garcia and the majority of the Denver Regional Council of Governments' board of directors, worry that the roadway would fuel runaway development.

Wells says he will surround the road with open space and leave it to counties and their zoning powers to prevent sprawl.

He says the Front Range would benefit far more than it would be hurt by the speedier transportation of goods the toll road would allow.

"Whether we like it or not, this is not the rugged West," Wells says. "We depend on people all over the world for our life, our sustenance."

Staff writer Chuck Plunkett can be reached at 303-820-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com .