Plan to connect Interstate 25 to Interstate 27 in Raton, NM, receives federal funding
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — Extending I-27 92 miles from the Texas line to I-25 in Raton, NM, is a goal of the Ports-to-Plains Alliance.
The Texas-based Alliance is a coalition dedicated to improving transportation infrastructure and establishing a highway corridor from Texas to North Dakota, and eventually from Mexico to Canada.
Joe Kiely, the Alliance’s vice president of operations, said that the group recently received $3.2 million in federal funding for a study group in Raton to determine how the I-25/I-27 connection would best succeed.
He explained that the connection to the two interstates would be made via US 64/87, which is already a four-laned highway but would need an upgrade to interstate standards.
But he added that we may not see the new freeway segment for another 25 years because of the uncertainty of future funds from Congress.
Kiely cited a 2021 study indicating it would cost nealy $220 million to improve the 92-mile segment, but $1.3 billion to convert it to an interstate freeway — and that’s in today’s dollars.
“The longer it takes to build it, the more it’s going to cost,” he said.
Furthermore, Kiely said that not all trasportation departments in the four states affected by the connection — Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma — are on board with it.
“Colorado is not very interested in doing anything that has to do with highways,” Kiely explained. “Their priorities lie in transit and rail and bicycles and pedestrians. And so, we’ll see what the election brings. Money has to become available. And it’s difficult for (transportation depsartments) right now, because Congress has not completed a transportation reauthorization bill. And so, they have no idea what dollars are coming their way in the next five years, even.”
However, he said that the federal funding allocated to the plan shows how the government wants to build on the interstate highway system’s original mission of increasing travel efficiency and stimulating economic growth.
The connection could bring development that would improve tourism and commerce in the Raton area — benefits that would likely spread north, to some degree, into Colorado.
Kiely lives in Limon and said that he’s been working on the idea since a year before the Alliance officially formed in 2009.
Click here to follow the original article.