E470 EXpressToll accounts 250k with 463k transponders

E-470 Public Highway Authority have announced that their EXpressToll accounts are past the quarter million mark with 463k transponders on issue. The Denver metro area has around 2.8m people and probably 2.3m motor vehicles so around one in five vehicles in the area has a transponder. (see note below on FHWA's rubbish statistics)

E470PHA report that accounts by city are:
- Aurora 27.2k
- Parker 21.2k
- Littleton 17.8k
- Denver 12.9k
- Fort Collins 12.7k
- Boulder 11.4k
- Highlands Ranch 11.3k
- Colorado Springs 9.9k

Aurora, Parker, Littleton and Highland Ranch are all along the E470 tollroad showing the closeby residents are the biggest users.

The majority of users arer in Arapahoe, Douglas, and Adams counties. But the Fort Collins and Colorado Springs numbers are rather amazing. They are 89km (55 miles) and 111km (69 miles) away from Denver.

Rubbish statistics from FHWA

In estimating the number of motor vehicles in the Denver metro area at 2.3m we multiplied the population of 2.8m by 0.82, 0.82 being about the ratio of motor vehicles to population in the US (242m/293m) as a whole. On that basis the whole state of Colorado 4.75m people would have about 3.9m motor vehicles.

But the FHWA statisticians put Colorado's motor vehicles at 2 million less than that - at only 1.81m. They would have you believe that states with a similar population to Colorado such as Louisiana and South Carolina have around twice Colorado's motor vehicle fleet (LA 3.82m and SC 3.34m). And that Coloradans have only 0.18 automobiles per capita vs 0.46 US-wide.

See http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ohim/hs05/motor_vehicles.htm Table MV-1

Obviously with so few motor vehicles Colorado doesn't need all that highway money they are getting from the FHWA.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-08-14