Editor:

I disagree with Randall O’Toole’s recent op-ed regarding transportation funding.

If our goal as a state is to move people and goods safely and efficiently, then it is shortsighted and ultimately harmful to limit state funding to only certain modes.

Colorado needs to maximize mobility by investing in a wide range of infrastructure and services. We need shuttles that serve rapidly aging rural communities and keep them connected to medical appointments and other critical services many miles away. We need regional buses that move tourists and employees around ski towns so they can avoid building mammoth, costly and ugly parking lots. We need affordable bus services that transport kids to schools. We need robust, express bus services in tight urban corridors where widening roads is no longer feasible.

Ignoring these options and arbitrarily limiting state transportation dollars to a single mode will lock Colorado into a future of congestion, high costs and unnecessary barriers to moving people in every part of the state. That’s why Colorado should join the majority of states like Alaska, Wyoming, New York and Maryland that invest a lot more than we do in transit across the state.

Danny KatzDirector, CoPIRG (Colorado Public Interest Research Group)Denver, Colo.