Colorado court rejects challenge for highway plan

[Alps]

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_22564907/colorado-court-rejects-challenge-highway-plan

In a nutshell, the community can't vote to decide future highway plans and circumvent the engineering process. Well, duh, but if the vote came out the other way, there would be a terrible precedent set. How can you commit to a large scale project if after years of planning and preliminary design, suddenly your highway is moved three miles west by a voter initiative? I know this has broader implications than just Colorado, but let's see where discussion takes us.

[cjk374]

The voters in a southeast Shreveport, LA subdivision have been wreaking havoc on getting LA 3132 finished.

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=4510.0

[thenetwork]

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_22564907/colorado-court-rejects-challenge-highway-plan

In a nutshell, the community can't vote to decide future highway plans and circumvent the engineering process. Well, duh, but if the vote came out the other way, there would be a terrible precedent set. How can you commit to a large scale project if after years of planning and preliminary design, suddenly your highway is moved three miles west by a voter initiative? I know this has broader implications than just Colorado, but let's see where discussion takes us.

I'm surprised how vague this article is.  Is this in regards to CO-82 and the new Colorado River crossing in Glenwood Springs, or is this in regards to CO-82 where the divided highway ends west of Aspen?  CO-82 is a great road between the city limits of Aspen and Glenwood -- inside the respective city limits, it's a much different story.

[J N Winkler]

It is the entrance to Aspen--the Supreme Court opinion is online.

Vagneur et al. v. City of Aspen

In regard to the general points Steve raised, I have no disagreement with the general principle that voter initiatives should tackle high-level policy and not specific instances of its application such as relocation of particular lengths of highway.  In practice, however, legislative supremacy (and also direct democracy in states which allow voter initiatives) means this kind of meddling cannot ever be totally ruled out.  I guess my question would be how this is qualitatively worse than the legislature using its powers to rule out particular routings through primary legislation, or defunding the project altogether.

Edit:  Reading the opinion, it looks like the initiative promoters' motivation was to short-circuit the EIS process, which resulted in a two-lane "parkway" entrance to Aspen being adopted as the preferred alternative, with transit provision and congestion used as a ridership incentive, in favor of their favored solution, which has four lanes plus free width for bus lanes or light rail ("transit envelope").  This is a relatively (some would say suspiciously) rare instance of grassroots action being used to augment the scope of a proposed design rather than to serve NIMBYism.

[agentsteel53]

now can we get legislators to quit meddling with speed limits, and leave that to the engineers as well?

[J N Winkler]

now can we get legislators to quit meddling with speed limits, and leave that to the engineers as well?

'Fraid not:  boffins on tap, not on top.