Colorado T-REX Project (TRansportation EXpansion) - Model For Other Cities

Model For Other Cities

• Utah was the first state to employ design-build on a very large transportation project. It served as a model for T-REX. UDOT and the Utah Transit Authority worked to reconstruct a major Salt Lake City arterial, Interstate 15, and construction had to be finished for the 2002 Winter Olympics. This project required collaboration between UDOT and the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) because it combined a light-rail project with the roadwork, said Doug Dansie, principal planner for the Salt Lake City Planning Department. "The rail lines were built because just expanding the freeway wasn't enough to handle the commuter capacity," Dansie says. Utah's rail line solution, unlike T-REX, were not in the interstates right-of-way. Dansie believes projects like T-REX that combine traffic and highway expansion are probably the best approach to relieving congestion, though there is currently a bias toward road expansion. "It really does need to be a balance," Doug Dansie, principal planner for the Salt Lake City Planning Department said.

• Representatives from the Arizona Department of Transportation, the Maricopa Association of Governments and the Valley Metro Rail system in Phoenix observed T-REX. Phoenix is in the early stages of a similar project on its Interstate 10 corridor, one that also involves expanding the highway and building more rail lines, says Wulf Grote, director of project development for Valley Metro Rail. "We hoped the trip to Denver would spark some discussion on working together," Grote says. While Phoenix's light-rail project will not be complete until around 2019, the highway improvements are supposed to be finished in the next five years. Like T-Rex, Valley Metro wants to run its rail lines in the highway's right-of-way.

• Wisconsin Department of Transportation has considered implementing design-build strategies into future projects.