Executive Summary

This report assesses the financial feasibility of building the 11-mile proposed Jefferson Parkway from State Highway 93 north of Golden, Colorado, to State Highway 128 in Broomfield, Colorado, using future toll revenues. The report evaluates three different financing approaches and three operations and maintenance (O&M) cost scenarios (ranging from realistic to highly optimistic) and concludes that tolls cannot finance any of the construction cost of the proposed Jefferson Parkway. Toll revenues are also unlikely to cover operations and maintenance costs.

Traffic and revenue forecasts made with the well-developed Denver Regional Council of Governments

(DRCOG) regional traffic model show that the Jefferson Parkway would attract little traffic and, therefore, generate minimal toll revenue to repay potential investments. The road would have only 15,000 daily trips at its busiest location in 2030, even assuming population and employment growth at rates predicted by DRCOG before the current recession. Using the same per-mile operations and maintenance costs as on the nearby Northwest Parkway and E-470 toll roads, the Jefferson Parkway would make less money every year than it would take to operate and maintain it, let alone pay for its construction. The toll revenue is so small that the O&M costs for the Parkway would have to be a quarter of those on nearby toll roads for the Parkway to make even a small contribution to its construction cost.

The traffic and revenue analyses in this report assume a complete, grade-separated highway from State

Highway 93 to State Highway 128, with six interchanges, including one at each terminus. This is despite the fact that the Jefferson Parkway proponents are now only seeking approval for a road that would have surface intersections with stop lights at State Highways 93 and 128 and only two “half interchanges” between these locations.1 The practical effect of such a road would be to significantly further depress traffic and revenue from the modeled results used in this report. The inclusion of signalized intersections and fewer and only partial interchange access would make an already unattractive toll prospect even less so.

Because reasonably foreseeable traffic demand and potential toll revenue are so low, it does not matter whether private or public financing mechanisms are used. There is no business case that would attract a rational investor to incur the revenue risk, together with the construction cost risk, for the Jefferson Parkway project.

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