Success!
While thousands of Colorado college students descended on the beaches of Cancun, a team of 10 Colorado college students decided to spend their Spring Break making a difference in Colorado by traveling the state and building support for a 21st century transportation system.
View all the photos from our week online: Spring Break 2010
On March 26th, they completed their 6-day, 13-city tour of Colorado’s transportation system. Along the way they built support among businesses and elected officials for long-term stable funding to build a safe and efficient 21st century transportation system that saves consumers money, reduces our dependence on oil, alleviates traffic and air pollution, and avoids undermining our economic potential. Specifically, they called for funding that does the following:
- Fixes our crumbling roads and bridges. Colorado’s transportation system is in trouble with 47% of our roads and at least 125 bridges deemed in poor condition. Colorado’s state leaders took an important in the right direction last year by passing the FASTER bill which will allocate $250 million per year to maintenance. However, the Colorado Transportation Finance and Implementation Panel identified a need for $1.5 billion so more needs to be done.
- Expand clean, efficient transportation choices for Coloradans. Colorado has lots of important public transit projects in need of support (SEE TRIP ITINERARY BELOW FOR EXAMPLES). In addition, support is needed to encourage dynamic and accessible communities that are walkable, bikeable, and easier to connect with transit.
- Spend taxpayer dollars wisely. Focus transportation dollars on solving our biggest problems based on evaluation and accountability to a comprehensive state 21st century transportation plan.
At each stop, the students did an event to highlight local transportation needs and opportunity and generated numerous media stories.
The next step is to complete a report that compiles all the different projects the students highlighted and to then meet with State and Federal elected officials with the report and our 6-foot by 6-foot Colorado map we brought on the trip and decorated with photos and souvenirs documenting our trip and the projects we highlighted, to push for long term stable funding to build a 21st century transportation system.