Latest / That Car Show / Behind the Wheel with E470 Executive Director Joe Donahue (BONUS SPONSOR EPISODE)

Transcript

Behind the Wheel with E470 Executive Director Joe Donahue (BONUS SPONSOR EPISODE) · That Car Show

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It's engineered for perfection, every contour sculpted for
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uninterrupted motion, wider, smoother, more refined, and
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drives like a dream. Introducing the 2026 E 470
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experience the difference hey it's.
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Ryan from that car show. And lucky you, it's a bonus
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episode. And when I told you all I was
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planning to sit down with a guy who runs a tollway, a lot of you
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had questions. Apparently, tollways are the
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source of a lot of speculation and a bit of mystery.
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Even so, I caught up with Joe Donahue, CEO and Executive
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Director of E 470 right here in Colorado, and we did it
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properly, with him behind the wheel driving the road he runs.
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And while I don't know that I've ever been on a nicer, better
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maintained Rd. there is a little Rd. noise on this one comes with
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the territory. But stick around because this is
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a genuinely interesting conversation.
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We dispel some myths and cover some truly interesting facts and
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nerd out on what it takes to operate what might just be one
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of the best run roads in the country.
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You could find E 470 online, of course, at e470.com and on
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Instagram at E470 Tollway. It's Joe Donahue, CEO and
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Executive Director of Colorado's E 470.
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And it's that car show. Hey, it's Ryan from that car
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show. And I am here today with the CEO
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and Executive Director of E 470, Joe Donahue.
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All right, Joe. I'm good.
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How? Are you doing, I'm doing well?
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So we are behind the wheel of a big suburban on E 470 and I
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should probably explain it. We should probably explain
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exactly what E 470 is. I know it's the toll road in
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Colorado, but beyond that, what is E470?
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Well, it is a toll road. It was a toll road that was
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imagined about 30 or 40 years ago to really become an economic
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development engine of the eastern part of Denver.
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So it runs from South Denver at E470 and C470 at I-25.
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It goes all the way up north to it on Hwy. 7, just South of
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there and back. In the time that they decided to
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make it a toll road, the governor and several the state
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legislators knew that there wasn't going to be enough
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funding to build a Beltway around Denver.
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So they said let's create a toll road authority and build a toll
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road out there. Well, the first thing I noticed
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is that the road is very smooth. It seems like the lanes may be a
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little wider than your typical lane.
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And I I think of the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer adopts
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part of the highway that paints over some of the lanes.
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Right. Yeah.
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So you've got lots of room. It's it's probably the closest
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thing. I don't want to call it the
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Autobahn. That's probably not what you
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want to hear, right, for right car enthusiasts.
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But it's a it's a really great tarmac.
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Is it a different tarmac than maybe what we'd see on 70?
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No, I think our legs are wider. We have 12 foot lanes.
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We also go with wider shoulders. It's, it's built, it's built to
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the highway standards, but we're not sort of pressed for space.
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So we're able to take the full width of the road and and build
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it, leave the lanes at at 12 foot.
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We don't have any construction sort of pushing it in so.
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And why do people take E 470 versus some of the I guess the
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quote UN quote free roads? Well, I would tell you the
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airport is a big draw. We have about 25% of our traffic
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is going to the airport either as a passenger, as an employee,
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but they also take it because there's no congestion on the
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470. It's it's really built and
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designed to be congestion free. We know we maintained it at such
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a level that we don't ever, we don't want to have congestion.
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So we stay ahead. We add capacity, we need to add
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capacity, but it's really a time saving.
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It's dependable. Even we had incidents and we
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clear the very quickly. And so when somebody needs to
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meet somewhere in the amount of time they don't sort of roll the
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dice and get on I-25 or 270 or whatever it is, I think it's
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really a dependability, so. What's to do with the E 470
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exposed? I've seen some things around
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town that got my gears turning. Well, it was sort of the
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beginnings of a campaign for E470 and we went through a
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rebranding this year. And the whole if tent of the
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rebrand was to really get the public to understand what E 470
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is and why we do what we do. So it's really an opportunity
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for us to get really factual information out there about who
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owns E 470. Why is it a toll road?
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How long will it be a toll road and all those things because
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there's there's so much myth out there, you know, and you know,
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everybody's an expert on everything.
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And so you get on social media and he's talking about the toll
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road, and somebody knows exactly what's supposed to happen.
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And, you know, and we're owned by the Japanese because, you
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know, when privately owned and the money is going somewhere
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else. And we just wanted to get the
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truth out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I guess Denver has some things that sort of get conspiracy
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folks hearts to flutter like the airport you mentioned and
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Lucifer and all this. But but it does seem like E 470
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is pretty straightforward, right?
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And you mentioned is it going to be a toll road forever?
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Is it going to be a toll road forever?
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Well, I would tell you that there's no plans for it not to
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be a toll road. And so, you know, there many,
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many years ago, you know, 50 years ago, but US 36 was the
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Boulder Denver Turnpike and they came in it's and the governor at
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the time said, well, jeez, let's get this paid off and take the
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tolls off of it. But the thing the, the revenue
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we collect does more than just pays the debt.
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It operates the ROW, but it also ensures that we can keep 12 foot
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wide lanes to keep the road smooth and add capacity.
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So, you know, I always tell people, hey, if you want to take
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the toes off, we can do that, but we're going to look an awful
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lot like I-25. Well, and.
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And it's a great point, Joe. I've not seen one pothole since
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we got on the road here, which is kind of incredible as a, as a
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car guy, you know, the people listen to the show are
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enthusiasts. This is a big deal where, you
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know, we don't like having to repair rims or fix tires and
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this kind of thing, right? I mean, this is incredible.
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I, I've only been on this road a handful of times.
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I guess I'd forgotten how good it really is.
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It's it's it really is. It's got to be the best Rd.
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surface in this state. It's got to be RAID.
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Yeah. Well, we definitely pride
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ourselves on keeping the road smooth, but we also keep it
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clear of debris. And we have technology.
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We monitor the road monitor percent with cameras.
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And then we actually have technology in those cameras now
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that allows us, if there's debris on the road, it'll alert
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our traffic management center that for something on the road.
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And we can get somebody up here to clear it off because it's,
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you know, it's bad enough to have a pothole, but if there's a
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big chunk of metal lane under Roy, that also creates hazard as
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well, so. Right, right.
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You know a lot of folks listening if you're in Colorado
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and talk about needing a new windshield about once a year,
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right? But that generally happens in
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70. I'm not seeing a thing on this
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road surface. In fact, there's probably a new
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trash. It's just that it's
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exceptionally nice piece of pavement that that said, I bet
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you've seen some strange things in your tenure.
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What's the strangest thing you've ever seen go down up you
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470? Oh, well, I mean, I could tell
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you lost stuff and the I, I was driving to work just a few
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months ago and there was a recliner sitting next to you and
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I felt, well, jeez, I mean hop out, put that in the back of a
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truck and put in my office. Yeah.
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How does that happen? I assume it fell off but.
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But it was sitting up perfectly. Oh well, like somebody could be
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sitting there watching the traffic drive by.
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Yeah, yeah, that's, that's amazing.
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That's I suppose you kind of keep the riffraff off the right
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because you do charge, right. I mean, you have a a different
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category of people maybe that Oh.
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Yeah, but we also get some really creative individuals that
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they really love to try to deceive us.
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I mean, we see people wreak the, you know, there were pictures,
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you know, because we take pictures of every car that comes
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through that doesn't have a transponder.
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We see people hang out of their trunk and put their hand over
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the license. Really.
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We see motorcyclists turn backwards, put their hand over
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the license plate. We actually, I caught a guy a
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couple years ago, right before I started here, he was taking his
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license plate off. He was sitting on one of our
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ramps of taking his license plate off or driving the road
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and then putting it back on. And it was our surveillance
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cameras that saw him stop on this ramp every day and he would
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take his license plate off and they sent the State Patrol up
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there. They could see him taking his
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plate off and they sent him up there.
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Sure enough, he was they they can because we get the image
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still. We could see the vehicle.
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We didn't know where it was but we knew type of day guy was
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confusing him, just not they in his tolls.
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Yeah, I guess this is not the place you want to be if you have
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no license plate or have a paper plate from 2024, that kind of,
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Yeah. And this isn't forced.
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The enforcement here is Allstate Patrol.
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Yeah, now that the tolls would be we, we have forced that.
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But the like traffic enforcement is State Patrol.
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But you know, the counties and the cities can also write a
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ticket out here. I don't care.
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People would be fooled. If you're out here doing 100
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miles an hour and there's a County Sheriff, they're probably
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going to pull you over. But as far as incident
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management, we do use the State Patrol just because there's we
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don't run into jurisdictional type issues off her like who's
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in charge here. It's also a hazmat route and so
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we were dedicated as a hazard hazardous materials route a few
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years ago. So it keeps, you know, any
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hazardous material off the local roads so they can move it north
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to South. So growing up in Chicago and
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Kansas of all places, where I did in Kansas, we had the
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Turnpike and you used to have to stop with these like punch
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cards, right? And so every, I don't know, 12
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miles or something, you'd stop. You had it over to the person in
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Chicago. You know, we were known for the
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Skyway, right? You, you know your handful of
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change, hopefully not drop it. It was all very archaic.
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This is not that as we're driving here, everything is
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automated. In fact, I think you had a part
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in the automation right in the product that actually does the
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automation. Right.
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So we used to be years ago was sort of traditional tolling.
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We had, I think we had express lanes where you could drive
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through and didn't have to stop. But we also had cash lanes where
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you pull over into toll booths and we had toll collectors out
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there. And we also had at the ramps,
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certain locations we had coin machines.
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So we're going to sky away. You'd throw your money right
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back. In 2009 and 2010, we decided we
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were going to go cashless for a lot of reasons, safety be one of
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them. Now each time you get traffic
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merging into other traffic, you know, slower traffic going in a
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faster traffic, it creates a hazard.
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But it really wasn't operationally efficient.
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You know when you have toll collector sitting in a toll
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booth overnight and they're, you know, seeing 10 or 15 vehicles
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come free, but you're paying a person and actually free people
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to man a toll Plaza because you have manager in the end, so on
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each side. And so it just, it wasn't making
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sense and the technology is changing so much.
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Who knows what many people ask me, you know, we have to change
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our system in 10 years, what are we going to put in?
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I tell them, I honestly don't know because it's changing so
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quickly with technology, vehicles being able to
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communicate to roadside, communicate with other vehicles,
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GPS has become very, very accurate to where they could
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tell if I'm this lane versus that lane.
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So, but I think that was really the driver was we were trying to
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keep up with technology, but it's also better customer
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service speed you get on the road, you have to stop.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things I like is
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someone who doesn't always drive E47 just it's, you know, just
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not a part of my daily routine. For a lot of people listening,
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it is. I don't actually have a
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transponder. It's not even a transponder.
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It's a sticker, right? I don't have any idea how that
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works, RFI guess. But if you don't have a sticker,
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if you're from out of state, if it's not part of your daily
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routine and you drive E 470, not that big of a deal.
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You basically just get a a bill in the mail, right?
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And it's negligible. It's not like you are penalized
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in any way you might do it. You know, our, our goal
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ultimately is to collect the toll and so you know, we give
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preferred pricing if you have a transponder because it's a lot
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more efficient for us. We don't have to look up the the
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owner of the vehicle. We don't have to send a piece of
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mail to process the payment. We can simply, you know, the
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transponders associated to your vehicle associated to account
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you drive through that's automatic.
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But you're right, it's it's really easy.
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It's there's no prohibition, cut customers to get right on the
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road and and drive it and we'll look up their information with
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the Department of Motor Vehicles and send them a bill.
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I got to give you a shout out for your lane discipline.
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That's something a lot of people who listen to that car show, we
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have an issue with people who don't pay attention to that.
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So kudos. I suppose you monitor all that,
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right? You must have all this data on
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on just driving and, and, and behaviors and all this.
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And, and I'm sure that that helps form signage and, and, and
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your future plans, right? I mean, it's how would you rate
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Colorado? You've you've lived in Texas
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other places drivers in Colorado pretty good overall or.
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They're OK. I mean, I, I, it's interesting
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coming from Texas, if you've ever driven to Texas, you know,
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that the speed limit is pretty much as fast as you can go up to
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the car in front of you. You get them to move over.
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I think Colorado, I would say they're a little bit more
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conservative than they're driving much slower.
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I think the, I, you know, some of the challenges I see is, you
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know, to your point, lane discipline.
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Yeah. People don't, you know, they
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want to stay a little bit under the speed limit, but they were
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to stay in the left lane. And that's not stuff that we
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necessarily monitor. Yeah.
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But we do know we're volumes of traffic or each time we have a
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total location we can see where the traffic is and we know the
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time of day and we were very aware of the volumes building is
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you saw as we were driving we're down to four lane or two lanes
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in each direction. Now we just came out of three
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lanes in each direction and and our plan is to actually widen
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this section. It will be under construction
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this summer. Yeah, that work is going on in
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front of us right now, yeah. This is this a brand new
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interchange actually at it we're building, we're partnership with
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the city and the county that we're in here, this Sable Blvd.
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and they wanted an interchange here.
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So we put an interchange out that the one thing that we the
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one thing that's great about the four 70s, we can get projects
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done a whole lot quicker a because we have funding.
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That's what the tolls represent is what we need to add an
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interchange. We need to add a late, we've got
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funding to do it. But we also you don't we don't
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fall into the same rules as a state.
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I mean, we're a political subdivision of the state, but
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we're not under the same procurement rules and things
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like that. I mean, we, we have our own
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policies and we do things fairly, but we we like to be
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nimble and get things done quickly.
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So that interchange probably is going to take us by the time
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it's all said less of a year and a half to build.
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OK, well, sufficiency really is sort of baked into the the
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thing. What are some things about E 470
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that people might not do? Well, but I think one of the
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things, I think it's again, you know, who owns E 47, E 470 is
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owned by the, the cities and counties that we operate in.
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And so we have 33 counties and five cities that we operate in
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the, or I'm sorry, Adams, Arabaho, Douglas counties.
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And then we have from the north to South, we got Thornton,
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Brighton, Commerce City, Aurora, Parker or the, the voting
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members. And so we we don't do anything
16:12
without that board of directors making a decision for it and
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that those board members are all elected officials by those
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jurisdictions or either county commissioners, City Council or
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mayor of those respective cities.
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And so that they control it all. I think the other thing is, is
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E470 does more than just builds ropes.
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You know, if if you, we're not quite up here yet, but you know,
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this Regional Park here has a trail system where we've built
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24 miles of trail on our Rd. as well.
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Yeah. And so the attempt is we're
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going to have a trail that runs the length of the road.
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And I think the important thing is, is we're actually tapping
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into the existing trail system so that, you know, if there's
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already trails like here at the Adams County Regional Park,
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we're going to connect into that trail system so that Donnelly
17:01
can you get north-south and you know, you know, long E 470, but
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you can get into the trails that already connected to those
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cities. Yeah, I certainly had no idea
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that you were involved pulling trails.
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Yeah, it was him. It's.
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The other thing we do is we actually partner with many of
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our jurisdictions. We've, you know, we have built
17:18
infrastructure that may not have been built otherwise.
17:22
A good example is that interchange you just saw, you
17:25
know, Adams County in Brighton, they really wanted an
17:28
interchange there. Adams County has their
17:30
government center there and they said, hey, we'd love to have a
17:34
interchange here, but you know, we can't afford to build a $40
17:37
million interchange. So we partner with them and we
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we're paying about 2/3 of that out of the toll dollars that we
17:44
collected. But again, it serves the
17:46
customers money 470 that want to get into Brighton.
17:49
They didn't have access there, but it also helps those cities
17:52
to get infrastructure that otherwise they didn't have.
17:55
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
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And it's a really pleasant Dr. It's a pretty drive.
17:59
I mean, we're actually in some hills, right?
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I'm not exactly not sure where we are, but it's if you just
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want to get in the car and go and go to the airport or
18:06
whatever. I can't imagine a nicer way of
18:09
doing it. So obviously your numbers are
18:11
growing. You have plans for expansion.
18:14
You must look 203040 years into the future to see what's needed.
18:18
I, I suppose that the projections are, are still that
18:21
Denver's going to continue to grow, especially to the east.
18:25
Give me some facts and figures about, you know, the usage of
18:28
the road and sort of where you predict things will be at 1020
18:31
years from now. Right now, you know, really, you
18:35
know, every every toll road and every agency of the country that
18:38
does this sort of uses the COVID, you know, that's like
18:43
post to that sort of vocation, right, right.
18:45
But you know, we, we recovered from COVID in about two years
18:49
and we actually by 2023 we had exceeded our projections that
18:53
were pre COVID projections. And so right now we grow about
18:58
6-7 percent a year in volume and also that same amount in
19:02
revenue. And so we're getting a lot of
19:04
organic growth. I think the unique thing about E
19:07
470 is we haven't raised our tolls in almost eight years,
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which is really an odd circumstance.
19:15
Perhaps most toll roads every year, every few years, they're
19:18
raising their tolls just sort of keep up with their costs of
19:21
operation and whatever their capital needs are.
19:24
And hey, we're very fortunate in that we haven't had to raise our
19:27
tolls because we're seeing so much growth.
19:30
But because of that, we're also seeing the need for initial
19:33
capacity. So as I said, we've got another
19:36
widening program that we're getting ready to start this year
19:39
and it'll go about 7 or 8 miles from about 104th Ave. on our Rd.
19:47
up just past US 85. And then as soon as we finish
19:50
that, this section that we're in now will be widened all the way
19:54
up to I-25, which you just see the bridge up there.
19:57
And that's the very North End of our Rd.
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OK. And so this this section from
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when we left the office to where we are now, just north of I-70
20:05
is really the growth corridor for the Front Range.
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And so it's sort of Adams County, Commerce City, Brighton.
20:16
Really up I 76 and so not only are going to widen the road to
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go to six lanes total 3 in each direction.
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We're also planning two major interchanges one at I-70, which
20:28
today we had you can get on the I-70, but you have to go down
20:31
this traffic lights is not a direct interchange like you
20:35
would have like the Interstate up here.
20:39
But we're also going to build an interchange at I-76, which,
20:45
well, we go back, I'll point it out.
20:46
Right now we have 2 connections. You could go from E470
20:50
northbound, I I-76 northbound, or if you're coming southbound
20:56
on I-76, you could get on E 470 towards the airport or
20:59
southbound. And those are the only two
21:01
connections we have. We'd like that, that ultimately
21:04
in the next 7 to 10 years will be a full Interstate interchange
21:09
like the what you see up here to where because stores can go any
21:14
direction for either either highway.
21:17
And so that's really in response to the growth.
21:19
But we also see additional interchanges to be built right
21:24
at Six Parkway where the authority is.
21:26
We'll need to widen that ramp, those ramps and that bridge to
21:30
carry the capacity that's crossing our Rd.
21:35
In fact, this bridge up here that we're coming up on the
21:38
cities actually have red Clyde in this.
21:40
So this will be a crossing that and we'll participate in that
21:45
project as far as making sure that it gets built to the
21:48
standard created to the adult tab.
21:50
But so a lot of new interchanges coming.
21:54
We, we, I see probably in the next 10 to 15 years, we're going
21:58
to spend probably 2 1/2 billion dollars will have additional
22:02
capacity. And then we'll actually go back
22:04
down South to the South end of the road and widen down South to
22:09
8 leads, which is the oldest section of the road.
22:13
So from I-25 down South to Parker Road, we'll widen that to
22:18
8 lanes and then ultimately up to Panda Blvd.
22:21
It'll get wide to 8 waves and it's just based on the capacity
22:25
we're seeing. So it's honestly, you have a
22:27
passion for this growing up this did you want to run a a toll
22:32
road or a. Tollway, or I actually want to
22:34
be a baseball. Club, did you really?
22:35
OK. You know what's funny is I, I
22:40
didn't even know what the toll road and actually right out of
22:43
college, I worked on the ambulance for about 7 years and
22:47
decided that I wanted to go back and get my accounting and
22:50
finance degree, which I did. And I got a job as a financial
22:55
analyst at the toll road in 10,000.
22:57
And so I do nothing about it. I remember thinking there's a
23:01
toll road in Colorado and, and what am I going to do working at
23:04
a toll road? I mean what do they do?
23:06
And so obviously, I, I started and, and so my, my story is
23:11
pretty interesting because I started here in 2000 as a
23:15
financial analyst and I worked my way up and became the CFO and
23:19
in 2012, so I worked for about 12 years here. 2012, I left, I
23:23
moved to Texas and I became a consultant and I was working for
23:26
toll roads around the country. And I did that for about 12
23:29
years and then came back to E470.
23:32
It was hired as their executive director back in 2024.
23:36
And it's interesting because you brought up Kansas and I actually
23:39
did some work with Kansas for about 5 years and you know the
23:43
system you were describing a pulling a ticket, they don't do
23:46
that anymore. We converted their road to an
23:49
all electronic toll road like E 470.
23:51
So you had. Part of that.
23:52
Yep. Now you don't pull a ticket in
23:54
Kansas, you just drive through and just like they do here, do
23:58
it Kansas. And there's something really
24:00
unique about Kansas and Colorado and, and that if you have a
24:05
transponder, you can use your E 470 transponder, you can use it
24:09
in Kansas or Oklahoma or Texas. And so if you drive one of those
24:13
roads, they'll send us the transaction and we'll post that
24:16
transaction to your account here.
24:19
So you can drive the toll roads there with a transponder.
24:22
Yeah, I suppose you've you've sort of nerd out on this kind of
24:25
stuff, right? And you, they're probably better
24:27
toll roads in your opinion, you know, less good toll roads and
24:31
this kind of thing. You want to give a shout out to
24:33
a couple of other systems, maybe in the US that you think do it
24:36
right? Well, I mean, I, I take a lot of
24:38
pride in the fact the work I did in Kansas, like I just said, you
24:42
know, they're, they're all, they're all sort of, they're all
24:44
unique and, and, you know, I did a lot of work with New Jersey,
24:48
which they're a huge system, but you know, they just operate
24:51
different there. They, they actually invest a lot
24:54
of money into transit. So tolls that are collected on
24:58
the New Jersey Turnpike are actually funding New Jersey
25:00
Transit as well. You know, Texas has a, you know,
25:04
I spent a lot of time in Texas. So they have a really good
25:08
system. They have a lot of toll roads
25:10
down in Texas and similar to here, you know, people complain
25:14
about, well, why there's so many toll roads.
25:16
We want to get rid of the toll roads.
25:17
But Texas did the same thing Colorado did about 30 years ago.
25:21
They realized that there's a lot of growth coming to Texas, and
25:25
they knew they weren't going to have sort of the traditional
25:27
funding that it was going to take to build out that highway
25:29
system. And so I think that's really the
25:32
big secret about tolling is, you know, nobody likes to pay for
25:37
it, but it costs a lot of money to build roads and operate
25:40
roads. And so the traditional
25:42
mechanisms that are out there in the fuel tax and, you know,
25:45
whether it be state or federal, it just doesn't go as far
25:47
anymore. And so tolling is part of that
25:50
solution. And that's that's why I take a
25:53
lot of pride in that and that, you know, we try to keep the
25:56
tolls as low as we can to pay for what we need.
25:59
We're not, we're not paying investors.
26:01
And nobody's getting rich off of a 470, though we do collect a
26:04
lot of money. It costs, you know, just to
26:07
operate the road. It costs about $100 million a
26:09
year to maintain it and operate it and do all the things that it
26:14
takes. And then we spend another 50 to
26:16
100 million a year and keeping the pavement up and keeping it
26:19
wide and, you know, maintaining the culverts and the bridges and
26:23
everything that it takes. But, you know, everything we
26:26
make goes right back into the road.
26:28
And I think the best systems are built like that, where the
26:32
dollars that are spent on the toll road by the customers go
26:35
right back into the toll road. Well, and I guess the brilliant
26:38
part of the toll road is if you don't use it, you don't pay for
26:41
it. That's right, Right.
26:41
And if if only that were the case for everything in our daily
26:46
lives. It's like, it's like renting a
26:47
car, right? Yeah.
26:48
You pay for what you use and you bring it back and you're done
26:51
with it. That's it.
26:51
All right. So Joe Donahue, CEO, Executive
26:54
Director of E 470, things that we should know as prospective
27:01
users of E 470 that make E 470 unique.
27:06
And I'll start with one Just sitting in the parking lot
27:08
before the meeting, walking to the lobby, there's a sense of
27:10
pride in the people that work for E470I.
27:13
I I overheard someone say that if you've got an incident on E
27:17
470, your Rd. crew your right side assistance.
27:20
We have a roadside assistance program.
27:22
They'll be there in 10 minutes for this, yeah, which is pretty.
27:25
We have a, we have a 24 hour day, seven day a week, 365 day a
27:30
year traffic management center and we can monitor the road with
27:34
cameras and we could see if there's incidents.
27:38
But if you call star 470, it creates right to our traffic
27:43
management center and we'll, if you brought a gas, you got a
27:46
flat tire, something's going on. We'll dispatch your roadside
27:51
assistance out there and they'll fix your flat, get you on your
27:54
way, or they'll put gas in your car if they need to, or they'll
27:57
wait for you to get a tow truck and that's what you need.
27:59
So we take a lot of pride in that.
28:01
I think that adds to the safety of the road.
28:04
You know, we know that sometimes people are driving at night or
28:07
it's the weather's bad and they know that if they break down
28:11
that there's going to be some, that someone there to help no
28:13
matter what time of the day it is.
28:15
And that's all included. There's no charge, Yep, for any
28:17
of that. That's all.
28:17
Lectures are pretty great. Yeah.
28:19
And I think, I don't know if you mentioned it, but there are no
28:21
tax dollars used in the operation of E 470, which I
28:25
think is pretty great as a taxpayer.
28:28
So yeah, you are self-sufficient.
28:30
Yeah. I mean, the, the model was
28:31
designed that the tolls pay for everything that needs to happen,
28:35
whether it be to pay the debt off to operate the road, but
28:38
also to rebuild the road or reconstruct the road or add to
28:41
the road. And so the unique part of that E
28:44
470 was when they built it, it was really phase one of A 30 or
28:49
40 year program, if you will, knowing that ultimately it's
28:52
going to be a 8 lane divided highway with all these
28:55
interchanges. But they only built what they
28:57
needed at the time. But the idea was the tolls
29:00
collected would pay for all that when they needed it.
29:03
And so we didn't need to build it until the capacity got there
29:07
until the development happened. And so, but there is no tax
29:10
dollars. It's it's self-sufficient with
29:13
tolls, as I mentioned earlier, we haven't had to raise tolls,
29:16
which is even better because available to pay for increasing
29:20
debt over the years and increasing costs even through
29:23
inflation that we've been able to hold tolls the same.
29:26
That's incredible. And how do the tolls work?
29:28
I guess I don't know that I asked that.
29:30
Are they variable? Are they?
29:32
What are? How did the tolls breakdown?
29:34
So tolls are basically assessed based on the number of axles and
29:37
when I say axles, if you look at a car from the side or make the
29:40
fields are touching the ground. So this would be a 2 axle
29:43
vehicle and we charge you a rate for that.
29:46
And then if you have 3 axles, we charge you a little bit more.
29:49
If you have 4, we charge a little bit more.
29:51
And so it's it's fixed throughout the day.
29:55
We do have some variation in price by location, but it
29:59
doesn't change. It's not variable based on time
30:01
of day or any of that. It's just, you know, you drive
30:05
through and you pay whatever the rate is based on the type of
30:08
vehicle or number of axles your vehicle has.
30:11
Well, again, I don't know that I've ever been on a nicer road
30:14
to surface than E470. I mean, I'm really impressed.
30:17
It's clean. You know, there's, like you
30:19
said, there's nothing on the side of the road as far as a
30:21
driving experience goes. I mean, truly short of something
30:25
in Europe, I mean, this is about as nice as anything I've
30:27
experienced. So, you know, job well done.
30:31
E 470. You know, who knew a tollway
30:34
could be cool? But here, here we are.
30:36
So where do we find out more about E 470 Joe?
30:40
Well, you'd go to our website, e470.com, We're on Instagram,
30:46
we're on Facebook. Yeah, I know you're on
30:51
Instagram, I'm just waiting for you to follow me back.
30:53
But yeah, it's it's it's pretty neat thing we've got here in
30:58
Colorado, E 470 and Joe and your team doing a wonderful job doing
31:02
what you're doing. Appreciate your time today.
31:07
So Joe Donahue, CEO and executive director of E 470 and
31:12
a car guy himself, we really appreciate having you on that
31:15
car show today. I.
31:16
Really appreciate it. Thank.
31:17
You, we'll do it again. Yeah.
31:18
All right, Thank you. Thank you.