An Obama transportation department official urged Congress to pass a long-term highway funding bill during a visit to Broomfield this week.

Deputy Transportation Secretary Victor Mendez was in town on Monday to take part in a ceremony marking a milestone in the massive, ongoing U.S. 36 construction project.

Speaking outside Broomfield’s First Bank Center, Mendez said the politics in Washington, D.C., “are very difficult right now” when it comes to funding the country’s roads and bridges.Congress faces a July 31 deadline to pass legislation addressing the country’s transportation needs. But recent history suggests lawmakers will fall short of passing a long-term funding bill, instead opting for yet another stopgap measure.

Over the last six years, Congress has passed short-term transportation funding extensions 33 times.

The temporary funding measures are unsustainable, Mendez said, if Congress intends to repair roads and bridges.

“What concerns us more as we look at the entire nation is, at a time we ought to be building more options for Americans throughout the country, we’re actually building less,” he said.

Mendez reminded the audience that half of Colorado’s $1 billion transportation budget comes from federal aid. But stopgap funding measures that fail to keep up with construction costs and demand will keep having an adverse impact on states such as Colorado, which expects its population to grow by 10 million over the next 30 years, he said.

The deputy secretary called on Congress to take action on the Grow America Act, a six-year, $478 billion highway funding bill supported by President Obama and Mendez’ boss, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

Mendez said Colorado would receive a 20-percent increase in federal highway funding and a 50-percent increase in transit funding under the administration’s bill.

That’s if the measure advances.

“There’s difficulty getting it through the Republican House right now, which is sort of par for the course,” said Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who represents the 7th Congressional District.

Perlmutter called the constant cycle of short-term funding mechanisms in Congress “a joke.”

“If you’re a local government or a contractor, you can’t operate on a one-month time frame,” Perlmutter said.

While the Grow America Act faces an uncertain future in the House, the Senate, just one day after Mendez’s trip to Colorado, introduced its own highway funding legislation.

The bipartisan bill would also provide a six-year transportation funding increase, but not as much as the Obama administration-backed bill.

The Senate version, called the Invest in Transportation Act, would increase highway spending by about 13 percent over current levels, an annual increase of about $2 billion. The bill also sets up a program that aims to create jobs by creating incentives for companies to bring $2 trillion in foreign earnings back to the U.S.

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner is a co-sponsor of the legislation.

“It’s critically important that Congress finds a long-term, sustainable solution that maintains our roads and bridges and provides for the infrastructure that keeps our economy moving,” Gardner said in an emailed statement. “I’m a co-sponsor of the Invest in Transportation Act offered by Senators (Rand) Paul and (Barbara) Boxer, which would do just that. I look forward to reviewing the legislation recently passed by the Environment and Public Works Committee.”

Public-private partnership

With uncertainty in Congress over transportation funding – and with no public appetite for raising gas taxes to boost funding – states including Colorado are turning toward public-private partnerships to fund highway projects.

The massive U.S. 36 Express Lanes Project is an example of that kind of funding. In fact, it’s Colorado’s first-ever public-private funding partnership.

The $500 million project will bring express lanes, bus rapid transit and a commuter bikeway that will connect Denver to Boulder.

“If I had to pick one word to describe this project, it’s ‘innovation,'” said Colorado Department of Transportation Executive Director Shailen Bhatt. “It’s a project of firsts.”

A ceremony was held to mark the completion of the project’s first phase, an 11-mile stretch from Federal Boulevard to Louisville’s 88th Street. The project is expected to be completed by early next year.

Gov. John Hickenlooper said the state will look into multimodal projects like this one for future projects in other areas of the state.

“We’re providing choices,” he said. “Look at why metro Denver has been doing so well. It’s all the young millenials moving here, and the top three things they say every time: bike lanes, light rail, bus.”

Tolling will begin on U.S. 36 on July 22. Rates will depend on which lanes drivers choose to travel and the times of the day they are on the highway.

Hickenlooper acknowledged that it might take some time for motorists to accept the reality of having to pay to drive on a metro area highway the frequent.

“People don’t want to pay a toll until they’re stuck two hours in traffic,” he said.

But the governor is confident riders will appreciate the easing of driving on the highway that will occur once the project is completed.

“No one likes to pay a toll,” he said. “Nobody likes it. I can’t stand it. But I also don’t like being stuck in traffic for an hour or two. And right now people don’t want to raise their taxes, so having a tollway is the best way to get this infrastructure built.”

– Twitter: @VicVela1