Mike Cheroutes is on a toll roll.
The director of the Colorado High Performance Transportation Enterprise is either going to be known as the toll troll or the savior of the state’s highway system at a time gas-tax funding for roads is becoming less reliable.
HPTE was set up out of the FASTER transportation measure that Cheroutes, a lawyer and long-time player in public finance deal-making, helped write and which was passed by Colorado legislators in 2009. It promotes alternate funding methods for transportation, like tolling and public-private partnerships.
This week, Cheroutes and an HPTE advisor briefed enterprise directors on the attempt to get a private consortium to build the second phase of the U.S. 36 express toll-lane project from the Interlocken/FlatIron mall area in Broomfield to Foothills Parkway in Boulder.