NW Parkway Colorado concession deal hinges on opportunities for extension

Brisa the Portugese/Brazilian toll operators have made their $500m+ deal to take over the Northwest Parkway in the Denver area dependent on local government political support for extensions. At a minimum they want support from the City of Broomfield to allow them to extend the tollroad about 5km (3 miles) south over US36 to CO128 which fronts onto Jefferson County Airport, also known as Rocky Mountains Metropolitan Airport. As built the tollroad peters out short of US36 and the route turns into a signalized arterial. (NOTE: This report is cobbled together mainly from local reports and background. Further details are expected to emerge today. LATER: see new report http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3110)

Under the terms of an agreed concession deal between the NW Parkway Public Highway Authority and the Brisa group, Brisa will fund $60m to extend the tollroad south to CO128. An additional $40m would be put in escrow for the public highway authority to be paid to them as a late concession fee if the Northwest Parkway is permitted to be built as far south as 64th Avenue. That would use CO93 an existing north-south surface arterial.

The concession contract documents pledge the city of Broomfield and the concessionaire to "use their best efforts to see that the missing segment of highway is completed and all the way to I-70 if possible."

A connection to I-70 and C470 is essential to complete a continuous belt route around the Denver area. The tax-funded C-470 constitutes a southwest quadrant of that beltway, the E470 tollroad the eastern half, and the NW Parkway an approximate sixteenth in the northwest, leaving a gap in the west between US36 and I-70. How that gap is filled is bound to affect the traffic and revenues of the NW Parkway to the north.

Various routes for the missing gap was studied in a Northwest Corridor environmental impact study 2002-2005, but the project seems to have bogged down since then.

See http://www.dot.state.co.us/NorthwestCorridorEIS/

There is strong opposition from the City of Golden to an expressway standard facility through Golden in the final miles south to I-70, so for the moment that is planned as a signalized arterial. With full expressway to the south and north it seems destined to eventually get proper grade separations.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-08-29