More than $573 million a year for transit, including the launch of 14 new bus rapid transit routes. Nearly $230 million annually to build bike trails and shoulders and expand bike-share programs. Approximately $243 million a year to construct 6,000 miles of new sidewalks and make repairs to 8,600 miles of existing ones.

All told, Colorado needs to invest $1.05 billion annually in transit, bicycle and pedestrian improvements for the next quarter century if it wants to cut emissions, unclog roads and reduce obesity, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project and the CoPIRG Foundation.

“This state is quite behind a lot of other states in the context of making of some of these investments,” said Danny Katz, CoPIRG Foundation director and co-author of the 80-page report.

Adding more opportunities for biking, walking and bus and train use statewide, he said, could help Colorado households ditch a car, saving themselves more than $8,500 a year in maintenance and operation costs.

Will Toor, transportation program director with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said the cost to make the changes recommended in the report could be covered by multiple sources, including local governments, metropolitan planning organizations like the Denver Regional Council of Governments or the state legislature.

But any funding bill to come out of the state Capitol would have to specifically allocate monies to alternative transportation solutions, he said, lest it be used to build more vehicle lanes.

“In any transportation funding package that moves forward, it needs to be a balanced package that provides funding for pedestrian, bike and transit infrastructure and not just highways,” Toor said.

The pressure to come up with alternatives to vehicle travel will only increase in the next 25 years, a period during which an additional 2.4 million people are projected to move into Colorado, according to the report.

The report breaks down the state’s needs into three broad categories: those moving by foot, those traveling by bike and those riding the train or bus. Jill Locantore, policy and program director for WalkDenver, said the annual allotment of $243.6 million eyed for sidewalk construction and repair would most benefit low-income areas in the metro area, where investment in pedestrian improvements has lagged.

On the cycling side, the report suggests that $229.5 million a year would be needed to build regional routes connecting communities across the state, ensure safe shoulders on rural roads and bring trail systems in every city up to the standards of the best communities in Colorado.

In the transit category, the report calls for a total of 14 new bus rapid transit lines for the Denver metro area, where transportation planners characterize several busy corridors as underserved. It also urges the completion of the Regional Transportation District’s North Metro Rail Line and the Central and Southwest Rail Extensions, as well as pushing for fare-free access to RTD’s current services in order to increase ridership.

Outside of Denver, the statewide Bustang service should be expanded to include Pueblo and Grand Junction, fixed regional bus routes should be considered for far-flung sections of the state, and frequent, weekend bus service to shuttle skiers and others to destinations along the Interstate 70 corridor should move forward, according to the report.

The cost for all these transit improvements: $573.6 million a year.

All told, the annual $1 billion-plus figure to address the needs cited in the report seems steep, Toor said, but it would just be a small piece of overall transportation expenditures in Colorado. And it would bring benefits — in the form of cleaner air, healthier residents, and a lifeline for seniors in rural areas seeking a reliable way to get to the doctor’s office or other appointments — that are hard to quantify monetarily.

“A billion dollars is a big amount, but you have to put it in the context of the many billions we spend on transportation every year,” he said.