We know how to fix Colorado’s horrendous ski traffic. Similar problems have been solved elsewhere, and the solutions are neither complicated nor expensive. Yet thousands find themselves stuck in soul-crushing traffic nearly every winter weekend.

On January 17, for example, a friend and I attempted to beat the traffic. But we didn’t leave early enough, resulting in a 5 ½ hour commute between Denver and Frisco. When Interstate 70 is less congested, the same trip takes just 1 ¼ hours.

Our experience, and other long delays, are well-known to skiers, snowboarders and the roughly 9.5 million tourists who visit Colorado’s mountains every year.

Since the Eisenhower Tunnel opened in 1973, the state’s population increased 128 percent. Ski resorts expanded. And now weekend traffic swells into an absurd fiasco that repeats every weekend — and year-after-year — as if it were a problem that could never be solved.

But a short-term solution would be easy, and it could likely be implemented as soon as next year if Gov. Jared Polis and other state officials get to work now.

I propose a massive expansion of bus service between cities in the Denver-metro area and ski resorts. The buses should be free for riders. And the new routes should be funded through a toll on drivers who use I-70 during peak periods.

The toll should vary in price. It would increase when demand is highest to discourage people from driving during peak periods. And if people want to avoid paying it, the buses should provide a fast, frequent alternative to driving.

Roughly 30,000 vehicles move through the I-70 Eisenhower Tunnel on days without weekend ski traffic, according to Bob Wilson, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Transportation. But the tunnel becomes a choke point as traffic jumps 50%, to approximately 45,000 vehicles per day, when people head to the mountains on weekends and holidays.

Tolls designed to limit traffic congestion are initially unpopular with the public. But politicians should press forward anyway. When people see how well congestion charges work, attitudes shift quickly and dramatically, according to an analysis by NPR.

In one of several examples, London officials started tolling drivers when they entered the city center at peak times. Before the congestion pricing program started in February 2003, just 40% of Londoners approved. But within five months, the toll cut traffic so much that support jumped to 59%.

In New York City, officials approved a similar congestion charge. Despite the intense controversy, the program will start next year. In Colorado, toll lanes already speed up traffic, even for drivers who don’t use them.

On a stretch of U.S. 36 between Denver and Boulder, a tolled express lane accelerated weekday traffic in all lanes by 10 mph, according to CDOT estimates. On I-70, an express lane between Empire and Idaho Springs cut average travel times during peak traffic in the two non-tolled lanes by 18%.

But not long after drivers pass Idaho Springs, traffic often comes to a hard stop behind miles of lurching vehicles.

With no plans to widen I-70 tunnels, there’s only one way for Colorado to reduce traffic congestion. We must increase the number of people who move through the tunnels we already have.

To understand how this is possible, imagine two cars and the space they take on a highway. A bus, which can carry up to 51 passengers, uses roughly the same amount of road. And even when half full, it moves exponentially more people than several private vehicles.

In fact, CDOT’s new Snowstang bus service, which launched in December, is pulling skiers out of cars. Buses depart Union Station with a stop at the Denver Federal Center Park-and-Ride before heading to Loveland, Arapahoe Basin or Steamboat. And the service is already exceeding ridership expectations.

But these comfortable motorcoaches, which are outfitted with cushioned seats, electric plugs, WiFi and easy-to-access storage, operate just a few times per week. So let’s ramp it up.

Ski buses should start picking up passengers from at least three other locations in the Denver metro. The number of ski destinations should grow to include all major resorts.

One hundred buses should run on Friday nights and 300 more on Saturday mornings. With that many vehicles, they could depart every five minutes during peak periods, requiring no one to wait. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the routes could be reversed.

And just as a toll would discourage people from driving, making the buses free would offer a powerful incentive for skiers and snowboarders to get themselves, and their gear, onto a bus.

In its first year, the plan could easily remove 10,000 skiers from private vehicles on busy days, even if the buses run half empty. Such numbers could prevent multi-hour delays on I-70, making the trip faster for transit riders and drivers alike.

Public transportation features professional bus operators, who are safe drivers. As thousands of road users move from cars to buses, the number of civilian drivers who cause traffic-snarling crashes will go down. This expansion of mass transit would cut air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, too.

The idea could be implemented quickly. The state would need a thumbs up from the municipalities along the tolled stretch of highway. The federal government would also need to approve the plan.

Federal law usually prohibits adding tolls to existing highway lanes. But Colorado could apply to the Federal Highway Administration’s Value Pricing Pilot Program, which allows new tolls when used to manage congestion.

Both local and federal approvals could be accelerated if the governor set a firm launch date for the project and committed to making a few calls to ensure the process stays on track.

The program could expand, too. Bussing up to 25,000 passengers per day is easy to imagine. But the state should also get to work on a long-term solution.

As Andra Zeppelin suggested last week in The Denver Post, Colorado needs to grow its rail network, in part because a single train can carry ten times more passengers than a bus. But new train lines could cost the cash-strapped state billions, and building them could take one or more decades.

Until then, people who are fed up with ski traffic should start telling their governor and state lawmakers that congestion pricing and expanded bus service offer an easy solution to traffic on I-70.

Andy Bosselman is a freelance journalist and past editor of Streetsblog Denver. Follow him on Twitter at @andybosselman.

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