Adding toll lanes to highly congested Powers Boulevard is one of the innovative ideas offered recently by Don Hunt, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation.

“It’s up to local decision-makers,” Hunt said. “But I think it’s good to start the conversation about tolling in Colorado Springs.”

Powers was the only road in El Paso County that Hunt suggested might benefit from tolling.

“Tolling is not the core future of this metropolitan area like it is in Denver,” he said.

Hunt has been with CDOT for two years and said he’s trying to “eke out more mobility out of what we have.”

He floated the idea to “run traffic on the shoulders of I-70 on Sunday afternoons,” at a reduced speed of about 50 miles an hour.

And Hunt wants a regional transit system that operates from Pueblo to Fort Collins and from Grand Junction to Denver.

“Don has been such a welcome breath of fresh air,” said Les Gruen, state transportation commissioner for the Pikes Peak region. “The changes at CDOT are amazing.”

Gruen doesn’t foresee toll lanes on Powers Boulevard any time soon, however.

“Traffic would have to get so bad that people will have to want to pay to get there quicker,” he said.

Hunt’s idea is to build additional lanes in the median of Powers — either two or four — as the toll lanes, known as high-occupancy tolling (HOT). Roads already in use aren’t allowed to become toll roads.

“It’s not surprising the director (Hunt) would bring that up as an option,” said CDOT north program engineer Doug Lollar. “We have limited resources and are looking at all options.”

That includes managed lanes systems like HOT and HOV (high-occupany vehicle).

El Paso County commissioner chairman Dennis Hisey said he likes Hunt’s creativity but was surprised the director broached the idea of tolling on Powers.

“He seemed to be taking a pragmatic approach, a non-governmental approach,” Hisey said. “But I’ve heard tolling tossed around so much, it’s hard for me to take it seriously.”

Hisey is chairman of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments board, which sets priorities and approves funding for transportation projects in the region. He doubts that tolling would be popular.

“I think people will put up with traffic lights and the inconvenience of congestion to not pay a toll,” he said. “It’s got to be significantly more convenient for them to agree to pay.”

The Powers corridor, which became state Highway 21 in 2007, handles about 70,000 vehicles a day, said CDOT resident engineer Mark Andrew. He said Interstate 25 in Colorado Springs runs about 120,000 vehicles a day, the same total he projects for Powers in 2035.

“It’s going to get really ugly, really congested,” county engineer André Brackin said of the Powers corridor.

The central part of Powers is a 17-mile stretch from Woodmen Road in the north to Mesa Ridge Parkway in the south. Eventually, officials envision connecting Powers to I-25 near the north gate of the Air Force Academy and close to Pikes Peak Raceway on the south.

A 2010 CDOT environmental study concluded that adding lanes and overpasses to Powers was preferred over other proposed freeways. The study eliminated three other ideas: making Marksheffel Road a freeway; constructing Banning-Lewis Parkway about three miles east of Powers; and building Prairie Falcon Parkway, a high-speed 200-mile toll road from Pueblo to Fort Collins, east of Powers by eight to 20 miles.

Andrew said the next Powers improvement is widening it to six lanes from south of Platte Avenue to Fountain Boulevard. Adding an interchange at Old Ranch Road could also happen soon.

An interchange at Stewart Avenue has been discussed, but could come after projects elsewhere. Andrew said projects expected to be funded ahead of the Stewart Avenue interchange include improvements at Cimarron at I-25, Fillmore at I-25 and the intersection at Highway 24 and 8th Street.

Still, Hunt said, “Powers is an important long-term investment for the county and the city.”

He stressed the importance of governments working together to improve the highly-congested state Highway 21.

“We’re not going to get there on our own,” he said, “and neither is the city.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper appointed Hunt as CDOT boss on Jan. 11, 2011.

“We attracted Don Hunt,” Hickenlooper said. “He takes ideas and makes them work.”

Perhaps Hunt’s biggest innovation is RAMP —short for Responsible Acceleration of Maintenance and Partnerships — which signals a change in how CDOT budgets and spends money for transportation projects.

Under the RAMP program, CDOT will fund multi-year projects based on money available that year, rather than saving for the full amount of a project before construction begins. That will free up about $1.5 billion — $300 million annually for the next five years — for transportation projects.

“RAMP is a totally different way of looking at how we operate,” Gruen said. “It’ll enable us to do more.”

Gruen welcomes the change of spending money when it’s available.

“There was a mentality prior to Don that we couldn’t spend that money,” Gruen said. “It was a conservative approach.”

Rob MacDonald, executive director of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, is cautiously optimistic about area projects getting money quickly.

“We’ve heard a lot about the RAMP program but we don’t know the criteria yet,” MacDonald said. “We don’t know whether our projects will be top shelf or not.”

The area’s top priority is fixing the interchange I-25 and Cimarron interchange. Fillmore and I-25 isn’t far behind. Both are in the design stages, with right-of-way acquisitions still being done on Cimarron.

Construction on the Cimarron project is expected to begin in 2014 and be completed by late 2016 or 2017, Gruen said.

Tom Wrona, CDOT regional director, said RAMP money may be available for Fillmore’s diverging diamond interchange.

“We’re hoping to accelerate that project,” Wrona said. “It’s one of the high priority projects for us.. There’s not a set funding plan in place. It could be ready by the middle of 2013 if everything fell into place.”

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Contact Bob Stephens: 636-0276 Twitter @bobgstephens

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