The straw man is a well-known debate tactic by which one side misstates or invents an opposing argument to make it easier to refute. And so we have representatives of Plenary Roads Denver claiming that the sentiment it must overcome about the redevelopment of U.S. 36 between Denver and Boulder is the notion that the entire road will be tolled. While it is possible that space travelers just back from Neptune are under this impression, the tens of thousands of drivers who use the Boulder turnpike each weekday are not.

What many of them see, and the topic Plenary and the Colorado Department of Transportation would most like to avoid, is the bottom line: A $500 million project that turned U.S. 36 into a hellish construction zone for more than three years will have the effect when finally completed of expanding a four-lane highway into a four-lane highway.

Plenary and CDOT will no doubt find this inaccurate as well, pointing out it is actually expanding the roadway from two to three lanes in each direction, or from a total of four to six lanes. This, of course, is where the tolls come in. The third lane in each direction will not, in fact, be available to most motorists unless they are willing to pay for it, thereby creating two economic classes of commuters — those confined to the two lanes that have long existed and those willing and able to pay for access to the third.

The concept behind this configuration, as well as a new bikeway in the corridor, is at least as old as the books of B.F. Skinner. The concept is behavior modification. By limiting the ability of commuters to drive between Denver and Boulder for free, the planners behind the reconfigured turnpike hope to coerce them to take the bus, carpool or pay for the privilege of using the express lane.

This last part is required for Plenary to recoup its investment in the new highway. That part is not Plenary’s fault. If taxpayers or their elected representatives are no longer willing to underwrite public investments in highways and other infrastructure, they will be turned over to private entities such as Plenary Roads Denver and those private entities will require returns on their investments.

But let’s be honest about the origins of the sour taste in the mouths of so many local commuters. It’s not because they are mistaken about what will result. It’s because they are not mistaken.

When voters approved RTD’s Fastracks program a decade ago, it was sold, as the name suggests, as a rail system. Rail has been deployed in a number of metropolitan corridors, but it has not been deployed in the northwest corridor. Psychologically, many commuters see trains and buses very differently. Public officials can argue until they are blue in the face that this distinction is not logical; it exists, and RTD officials know it.

Attempts to coerce commuters into buses or carpools in spread-out jurisdictions like these have met with very limited success for obvious reasons. Americans, particularly Westerners, like the independence and convenience of their own vehicles. Making this as inconvenient as possible has two effects — it persuades a small minority to find other methods of transit and it ticks off a large majority.

The social engineering implicit in the U.S. 36 redevelopment project consigns most commuters in the corridor to the same two lanes each way they have been traveling for years. After $500 million and more than three years of construction, that’s not much progress for the average commuter.

—Dave Krieger, for the editorial board. Email: kriegerd@dailycamera.com. Twitter: @DaveKrieger