E470 is the organization behind the Colorado toll road. The guest is the CEO/executive director, so they’re talking about how the road is run and maintained.
They’re using wider lanes than usual—12 feet instead of the typical narrower width. The idea is that it gives drivers more room and the road can be built without tight space constraints.
They’re talking about designing and running the road so traffic doesn’t pile up. The operator tries to stay ahead of demand and adds capacity when it’s needed.
A traffic management center is like a command room for road operations. They watch what’s happening on the road and dispatch help when there’s a problem like debris.
A pothole is a hole in the road where the pavement has broken apart. It’s dangerous because it can jolt your car and potentially damage your tires or wheels.
A license plate is the tag on a car that identifies it. Here, they’re talking about people trying to hide or remove it so cameras or police can’t track them.
Toll enforcement is how agencies make sure people pay tolls. If tolls aren’t paid, the system may flag the vehicle and law enforcement can get involved.
Incident management is the organized way authorities handle road emergencies. It’s about who coordinates the response and how traffic gets controlled so the situation is handled safely.
A hazmat route is a special road route used for trucks carrying dangerous materials. It helps keep those materials away from busy local streets and makes the transport safer.
This is about cars talking to things along the road, like sensors or roadside computers. That lets the system handle tolls and traffic more automatically.
Term
RF
RF means radio signals. In this context, it’s how the toll system talks to the device in your car.
This is the idea behind pay-by-sensor tolls: you drive through and the system figures out who you are and sends the bill. No cash booth or stopping is required.
“Toll dollars” is the money collected from drivers who pay to use a toll road. They’re saying that money can help fund big projects like highway connections.
A transponder is a small electronic tag in your car that talks to toll equipment. It lets the toll system charge you automatically when you drive through.
Roadside assistance means help is available if your car has a problem on the road. They can send someone to fix things like a flat tire, bring fuel, or arrange a tow if needed.
Dispatching means they send the right kind of help to where you are. If you have a problem like a flat tire, they send someone to fix it or arrange towing.
A tollway is a road you can use, but you have to pay a fee to drive on it. Here, the price depends on what kind of vehicle you have.
LIVE
It's engineered for perfection.
Every contour sculpted for uninterrupted motion.
Wider, smoother, more refined, and drives like a dream.
Introducing the 2026 E470.
Experience the difference.
Right here in Colorado.
And we did it properly with him behind the wheel driving the road he runs.
And while I don't know that I've ever been on a nicer, better maintained road,
there is a little road noise on this one.
Comes with the territory, but stick around because this is a genuinely interesting conversation.
We dispel some myths and cover some truly interesting facts and nerd out on what it takes
to operate what might just be one of the best run roads in the country.
You can find E470 online, of course, at e470.com and on Instagram at e470tollway.
It's Joe Donahue, CEO and Executive Director of Colorado's E470, and it's That Car Show.
Hey, it's Ryan from That Car Show, and I am here today with the CEO and Executive Director of E470, Joe Donahue.
How are you, Joe?
I'm good. How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
So we are behind the wheel of a big suburban on E470, and I should probably explain it.
We should probably explain exactly what E470 is.
I know it's the toll road in Colorado, but beyond that, what is E470?
Well, it is a toll road.
It was a toll road that was imagined about 30 or 40 years ago to really become an economic development engine of the eastern part of Denver.
So it runs from South Denver at E470 and C470 at I-25.
It goes all the way up north to about Highway 7, just south of there, and back in the time that they decided to make it a toll road.
The governor and several of the state legislators knew that there wasn't going to be enough funding to build a beltway around Denver,
so they said let's create a toll road authority and build a toll road out there.
Well, the first thing I notice is that the road is very smooth.
It seems like the lanes may be a little wider than your typical lane, and I think of the episode of Seinfeld, where Kramer adopts part of the highway,
that he paints over some of the lanes, right?
Yeah.
So you've got lots of room.
It's probably the closest thing.
I don't want to call it the Autobahn.
That's probably not what you want to hear, right, for our enthusiasts, but it's a really great tarmac.
Is it a different tarmac than maybe what we'd see on E470?
No, I think our lanes are wider.
We have 12-foot lanes.
We also go with wider shoulders.
It's built to the highway standards, but we're not sort of pressed for space,
so we're able to take the full width of the road and build and leave the lanes at 12-foot.
We don't have any construction sort of pushing it in, so.
And why do people take E470 versus some of the, I guess the quote-unquote, free roads?
Well, I would tell you, the airport is a big draw.
We have about 25% of our traffic is going to the airport, either as a passenger or as an employee.
But they also take it because there's no congestion on E470.
It's really built and designed to be congestion-free.
We know we maintain it at such a level that we don't ever, we don't want to have congestion,
so we stay ahead.
We add capacity when we need to add capacity, but it's really a time saving.
It's dependable.
Even when we had incidents, we cleared them very quickly,
and so when somebody needs to meet somewhere in a amount of time,
they don't roll the dice and get on I-25 or I-27 or whatever it is.
I think it's really a dependability.
So what's the deal with the E470 exposed?
I've seen some things around town that got my gears turning.
Well, it was sort of the beginnings of a campaign for E470,
and we went through a rebranding this year,
and the whole intent of the rebrand was to really get the public to understand what E470 is and why we do what we do.
So it's really an opportunity for us to get really factual information out there about who owns E470,
why is it a toll road, how long will it be a toll road, and all those things,
because there's so much myth out there, and everybody's an expert on everything,
and so you get on social media and you talk about the toll road
and somebody knows exactly what's supposed to happen,
and we're owned by the Japanese because we're privately owned,
and the money's going somewhere else, and we just wanted to get the truth out.
I guess Denver has some things that get conspiracy folks' hearts afloat,
or like the airport you mentioned, and Lucifer and all this,
but it does seem like E470 is pretty straightforward, right?
You mentioned is it going to be a toll road forever, is it going to be a toll road forever?
Well, I would tell you that there's no plans for it not to be a toll road,
and so many, many years ago, 50 years ago,
but US 36 was the Boulder, Denver, Turk bike,
and they came in and the governor at the time said,
well, jeez, let's get this paid off and take the tolls off of it,
but the thing, the revenue we collect is more than just pays the debt,
it operates the road, but it also ensures that we can keep 12 foot wide lanes
to keep the road smoother than add capacity,
so I always tell people, hey, if you want to take the tolls off, we can do that,
but we're going to look them off a lot like I-25.
Well, and that's a great point.
Joe, I've not seen one puddle since we got on the road here, which is kind of incredible.
As a car guy, the people listening to the show are enthusiasts.
This is a big deal where we don't like having to repair rims or fix tires or this kind of thing.
This is incredible. I've only been on this road a handful of times.
I guess I'd forgotten how good it really is.
It's got to be the best road surface in the state. It's got to be ready.
Yeah, well, we definitely pride ourselves on keeping the road smooth,
but we also keep it clear of debris, and we have technology.
We monitor the road to monitor percent with cameras.
We actually have technology in those cameras now that allows us,
if there's debris on the road, it'll alert our traffic management center
that for something on the road, and we can get somebody up here to clear it off
because it's bad enough to have a pothole, but if there's a big chunk of metal in a deroy,
that also creates hazard as well.
Right. A lot of folks listening live here in Colorado and talk about needing a windshield about once a year.
But that generally happens in 1970. I'm not seeing a thing on this road surface.
In fact, there's hardly any trash. It's just an exceptionally nice piece of pavement.
That said, I bet you've seen some strange things in your tenure.
What's the strangest thing you've ever seen go down a E-4 Saturday?
Oh, well, I mean, I could tell you lots of stuff.
I was driving to work just a few months ago, and there was a recliner sitting next to you.
I felt, jeez, I mean, hop out, put that in the back of a truck, and put it in my office.
Yeah, how does that happen? I assume it fell off, but...
Yeah, but it was sitting up perfectly.
Oh, wow.
Like somebody could be sitting there watching the traffic drive by.
Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
I suppose you kind of keep the riff-raff off there, right, because you do charge, right?
I mean, you have a different category of people, maybe?
Oh, yeah, but we also get some really creative individuals that they really love to try to deceive us.
I mean, we've seen people...
There were pictures, you know, because we take pictures of every car that comes through that doesn't have a transporter.
We've seen people hang out of their trunk and put their hand over the license.
Really?
We've seen motorcyclists turn backwards, put their hand over the license plate.
Actually, it caught a guy a couple of years ago, right before I started here.
He was taking his license plate off.
He was sitting on one of our ramps, taking his license plate off, arriving the road, and then putting it back on.
It was our surveillance cameras that saw him stop on this ramp every day, and he would take his license plate off.
And they sent the state patrol up there.
They could see him taking his plate off, and they sent him up there.
Sure enough, he was...
Because we got the image still, we could see the vehicle.
We didn't know where it was, but we knew what type of day it was.
I was computing it.
Just not paying his tolls.
Yeah, I guess this is not the place you want to be if you have no license plate or have a paper plate from 2024 or that kind of thing.
And the enforcement here is all state patrol?
Yeah, now the tolls...
We have forced that, but like traffic enforcement is state patrol.
But, you know, the counties and the cities can also write a ticket out here.
People would be fooled if you're out here doing 100 miles an hour, and there's a county sheriff.
They're probably going to pull you over.
But as far as incident management, we do use the state patrol just because we don't run into jurisdictional issues.
Like who's in charge here.
There's also a hazmat route.
And so we were dedicated as a hazardous materials route a few years ago.
So it keeps, you know, any hazardous material off the local roads so they can move it north to south.
So growing up in Chicago and Kansas of all places where I did, in Kansas we had the turnpike.
And you used to have to stop with these like punch cards, right?
And so every, I don't know, 12 miles or something, stop you had it over in the person.
In Chicago, you know, we were known for the Skyway, right?
You know, your handful of change, hopefully not drop it.
It was all very archaic.
This is not that.
As we were driving here, everything is automated.
In fact, I think you had a part in the automation, right?
In the product that actually does the automation.
That's right.
So we used to be, years ago, was sort of traditional.
We had express lanes where you could drive through and didn't have to stop.
But we also had cash lanes where you'd pull over into toll booths.
And we had toll collectors out there.
And we also had at the ramps, certain locations, we had coin machines.
So we were to the Skyway, you'd throw your money in there.
Right, right.
Back in 2009 and 2010, we decided we were going to go cashless.
For a lot of reasons, safety be one of them.
Now, each time you get traffic, merging into other traffic, you'll have slower traffic,
going into faster traffic.
It creates a hazard.
But it really wasn't operationally efficient.
You know, when you have toll collectors sitting in a toll booth overnight,
and they're, you know, seeing 10 or 15 vehicles come through,
but you're paying a person and actually free people to man a toll plaza,
because you have a manager and so on each side.
And so it just, it wasn't making sense.
And the technology is changing so much.
Who knows what people ask me?
You know, we have to change our system in 10 years.
What are we going to put in?
I honestly don't know because it's changing so quickly with technology,
vehicles being able to communicate to roadside, to communicate with other vehicles.
GPS has become very, very accurate to where they could tell if I'm at this lane versus that lane.
So, but I think that was really the driver was we were trying to keep up with technology,
but it's also better customer service.
You get on the road, you don't have to stop.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
One of the things I like is someone who doesn't always drive E-47 just,
it's, you know, just not a part of my daily routine for a lot of people listening.
It is, I don't actually have a transponder.
It's not even a transponder.
It's a sticker.
Right now.
I don't have any idea.
In other words, RF, I guess.
But if you don't have a sticker, if you're from out of state,
if it's not part of your daily routine and you drive E-470, it's not that big of a deal.
You basically just get a bill in the mail, right?
And it's negligible.
It's not like you are penalized in any way.
You might do it.
You know, our goal ultimately is to collect the toll.
And so, you know, we give preferred pricing if you have a transponder,
because it's a lot more efficient for us.
We don't have to look up the owner of the vehicle.
We don't have to send a piece of mail and process the payment.
We can simply, you know, the transponders associated to your vehicle,
associated to account, you drive through it.
It's automatic.
But you're right.
It's really easy.
There's no prohibition customers to get right on your road and drive it.
And we'll look up their information with the Department of Motor Vehicles and send them a bill.
I got to give you a shout out for your lane discipline.
That's something a lot of people who listen to that car show,
or we have an issue with, but we don't pay attention to that.
So, Kudos.
I suppose you monitor all that, right?
You must have all this data on just driving and behaviors and all this.
And I'm sure that helps form signage and your future plans, right?
I mean, how would you rate Colorado?
You've lived in Texas, other places.
Drivers in Colorado pretty good overall, or?
They're okay.
I mean, it's interesting coming from Texas, if you've ever driven to Texas,
that the speed limit is pretty much as fast as you can go up to the car in front of you
and get them to move over.
I think Colorado, I would say, they're a little bit more conservative in their driving,
much slower.
I think some of the challenges I see is, to your point, lane discipline.
People don't, they want to stay a little bit under the speed limit,
but they want to stay on the left lane.
And that's not stuff that we necessarily monitor.
But we do know where volumes of traffic are.
Each time we have a total location, we can see where the traffic is,
and we know the time of day.
We're very aware of the volumes building, as you saw as we were driving.
We're down to four lanes or two lanes in each direction now.
We just came out of three lanes in each direction.
And our plan is to actually widen this section.
It will be under construction this summer.
Yeah, that work is going on in front of us right now, yeah.
This is a brand new interchange, actually.
We're building, we're at partnership with the city and the county that we're in here.
They say, well, Boulevard, and they wanted an interchange here,
so we put an interchange up.
The one thing that's great about the E-470s, we can get projects done a whole lot quicker.
A, because we have funding.
That's what the tolls represent is.
Well, we need to add an interchange.
We need to add a late.
We've got funding to do it.
But we also, you know, we don't follow the same rules as the state.
I mean, we're a political subdivision of the state, but we're not under the same procurement rules and things like that.
I mean, we have our own policies, and we do things fairly,
but we like to be nimble and get things done quickly.
So that interchange probably is going to take us, by the type it's all said,
less than a year and a half to build.
Okay, well, sufficiency really is sort of baked into the thing.
What are some things about E-470 that people might not know?
Well, I think one of the things, I think it's again, you know, who owns E-470?
E-470 is owned by the cities and counties that we operate in.
And so we have three counties and five cities that we operate in.
It's Spora, or I'm sorry, it's Adams, Arabo, Douglas counties,
and then we have from the north to south, we got Thornton, Brighton, Commerce City, Aurora, Parker,
or the voting members, and so we don't do anything without that board of directors making a decision for it.
And those board members are all elected officials by those jurisdictions,
or either county commissioners, city council, or mayor of those respective cities.
So they control it all.
I think the other thing is E-470 does more than just builds roads.
We're not quite up here yet, but this regional park here has a trail system.
We've built 24 miles of trail on our road as well.
And so the intent is we're going to have a trail that runs the length of the road.
And I think the important thing is we're actually tapping into the existing trail system
so that, you know, if there's already trails like here at the Adams County Regional Park,
we're going to connect into that trail system so that not only can you get north-south, you know,
along E-470, but you can get into the trails that are already connected to those cities.
Yeah, I certainly had no idea that you were involved pulling trails.
The other thing we do is we actually partner with many of our jurisdictions.
We have built infrastructure that may not have been built otherwise.
A good example is that Interchange, you just saw, you know, Adams County and Brighton,
they really wanted to interchange there.
Adams County has their government center there.
And they said, hey, we'd love to have an interchange here, but, you know,
we can't afford to build a $40 million interchange.
So we partner with them and we're paying about two thirds of that out of the toll dollars that we collected.
But again, it serves the customers.
On E-470, they want to get into Brighton.
They didn't have access there, but it also helps those cities to get infrastructure that otherwise they didn't have.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's a really pleasant drive.
It's a pretty drive.
I mean, we're actually in some hills here, right?
I'm not exactly sure where we are, but if you just want to get in the car and go and go to the airport or whatever,
it can't imagine a nicer way of doing it.
So obviously, your numbers are growing, you have plans for expansion.
You must look 20, 30, 40 years into the future to see what's needed.
I suppose that the projections are still that Denver is going to continue to grow, especially to the east.
Give me some facts and figures about, you know, the usage of the road and sort of where you predict things will be 10, 20 years from now.
Right now, you know, really, you know, every toll road and every agency in the country that does this sort of uses the COVID, you know,
but it's like opposed to that sort of arcation.
Right, right.
But, you know, we recovered from COVID in about two years.
Okay.
And we actually, by 2023, we had exceeded our projections that were pre-COVID projections.
So right now we grow about six, seven percent a year in volume and also that same amount in revenue.
And so we're getting a lot of organic growth.
I think the unique thing about E470 is we haven't raised our tolls in almost eight years, which is really an odd circumstance.
Most toll roads every year, every few years, they're raising their tolls just to keep up with their costs of operation and whatever their capital needs are.
We're very fortunate in that we haven't had to raise our tolls because we're seeing so much growth.
But because of that, we're also seeing the need for additional capacity.
So as I said, we've got another widening program that we're getting ready to start this year.
And it'll go about seven or eight miles from about 104th Avenue on our road up just past US 85.
And then as soon as we finish that, the section that we're in now will be widened all the way up to I-25, which you just see the bridge up there.
That's the very north end of our road.
And so this section from when we left the office to where we are now just north of I-70 is really the growth corridor for the front range.
And so it's sort of Adams County, Commerce City, Brighton, really up I-76.
And so not only are we going to widen the road to go to six lanes total, three in each direction, but we're also planning two major interchange.
It was one at I-70, which today you can get onto I-70, but you have to go down the traffic lights.
It's not a direct interchange like you would at the interstate up here.
But we're also going to build an interchange at I-76, which we'll go back and point it out.
Right now we have two connections.
You could go from E-470 northbound to I-76 northbound, or if you're coming southbound on I-76, you could get on E-470 towards the airport or southbound.
And those are the only two connections we have.
We'd like that ultimately in the next seven to ten years will be a full interstate interchange like the one you see up here to where customers can go any direction from either highway.
And so that's really in response to the growth, but we also see additional interchanges to be built.
Right at Sixth Parkway, where the authority is, we'll need to widen that ramp, those ramps and that bridge to share the capacity that's crossing our road.
In fact, this bridge up here that we're coming up on, the city's actually a red quietness, so this will be a crossing that we'll participate in that project as far as making sure that it gets built to the standard.
So a lot of new interchanges coming.
I see probably in the next 10 to 15 years we're going to spend probably two and a half billion dollars of additional capacity and then we'll actually go back down south to the south end of the road and widen down south to eight lanes, which is the oldest section of the road.
So from I-25 down south to Parker Road, we'll widen that to eight lanes and then ultimately up to Penny Boulevard it'll get white day waits.
And it's just based on the capacity we're seeing.
So obviously you have a passion for this growing up.
Did you want to run a toll road?
No, I actually wanted to be a baseball player.
Did you really?
Okay.
You know, what's funny is I didn't even know what the toll road was.
Sure.
And actually right out of college I worked on the ambulance for about seven years and decided that I wanted to go back and get my accounting and finance degree, which I did.
And I got a job as a financial analyst at the toll road in 2000.
And so I do nothing about it.
I remember thinking there's a toll road in Colorado and what am I going to do working at a toll road?
What do they do?
And so obviously I started and so my story is pretty interesting because I started here in 2000 as a financial analyst and I worked my way up and became the CFO.
And in 2012, so I worked for about 12 years here, 2012 I left, moved to Texas and I became a consultant and I was working for toll roads around the country.
And I did that for about 12 years and then came back to E-470.
It was hired as their executive director back in 2024.
And it's interesting because you brought up Kansas and I actually did some work with Kansas for about five years.
And you know, the system you were describing of pulling a ticket, they don't do that anymore.
We converted their road to an all electronic toll road like E-470.
So you were part of that.
Yep.
Now you don't pull a ticket in Kansas.
You just drive through and just like they do here, do it in Kansas.
And there's something really unique about Kansas and Colorado and that if you have a transponder, you can use your E-470 transponder.
You can use it in Kansas or Oklahoma or Texas.
Okay.
And so if you drive one of those roads, they'll send us the transaction and we'll post that transaction to your account here so you can drive the toll roads there with a transponder.
Yeah, I suppose you've started nerd out on this kind of stuff, right?
I mean, you, there are probably better toll roads in your opinion, you know, less good toll roads and this kind of thing.
You want to give a shot at a couple of other systems maybe in the U.S. that you think do it right?
Well, I mean, I take a lot of pride in the fact the work I did in Kansas, like I just said, you know, they're all sort of, they're all unique.
And, you know, I did a lot of work with New Jersey, which they're a huge system, but, you know, they just operate different there.
They actually invest a lot of money into transit.
So tolls that are collected on the New Jersey dirt bike are actually funding New Jersey transit as well.
You know, Texas has a, you know, I spent a lot of time in Texas, so they have a really good system.
They have a lot of toll roads down to Texas and similar to here, you know, people complain about, well, why are there so many toll roads?
We want to get rid of the toll roads, but Texas did the same thing Colorado did about 30 years ago.
They realized that there's a lot of growth coming to Texas and they knew they weren't going to have sort of the traditional funding that it was going to take to build out that highway system.
And so I think that's really the big secret about tolling is, you know, nobody likes to pay for it, but it costs a lot of money to build roads and operate roads.
And so the traditional mechanisms that are out there in the fuel tax and, you know, whether it be state or federal, it just doesn't go as far anymore.
And so tolling is part of that solution.
And that's why I take a lot of pride in that and that, you know, we try to keep the tolls as low as we can to pay for what we need.
We're not paying investors and nobody's getting rich off of E-470, though we do collect a lot of money.
It costs, you know, just to operate the road.
It costs about $100 million a year to maintain it and operate it and do all the things that it takes.
And then we spend another $50 to $100 million a year in keeping the pavement up and keeping it wide and, you know, maintaining the culverts and the bridges and everything that it takes.
But, you know, everything we make goes right back into the road.
And I think the best systems are built like that, where the dollars that are spent on the toll road by the customers go right back into the toll road.
Well, I guess the building part of the toll road is if you don't use it, you don't pay for it.
That's right, right? And if only that were the case for everything.
It's like running a car, right?
Yeah, you pay for what you use, you bring it back and you're done with it.
That's it.
All right, so Joe Donahue, CEO, Executive Director of E-470, things that we should know as prospective users of E-470 that make E-470 unique.
And I'll start with one, just sitting in the parking lot before the meeting, walking to the lobby.
There's a sense of pride in the people that work for E-470.
I overheard someone say that if you've got an incident on E-470, your road crew, your roadside assistants.
They have a roadside assistance program.
They'll be there in 10 minutes, or yes, which is pretty amazing.
We have a 24-hour day, seven-day a week, 365-day a year traffic management center.
And we can monitor the road with cameras.
And we can see if there's incidents.
But if you call, start E-470, it creates right to our traffic management center.
And if you drive it to gas, you've got a flat tire, something's going on.
And we'll dispatch your roadside assistants out there, and they'll fix your flat, get you on your way,
or they'll put gas in your car if they need to, or they'll wait for you to get a tow truck if that's what you need.
So we take a lot of pride in that.
I think that adds to the safety of the road.
You know, we know that sometimes people are driving at night, or the weather's bad,
and they know that if they break down that there's going to be something there to help them, no matter what type of the day it is.
And that's all included. There's no charge for any of that.
Those elections are pretty great.
And I think, I don't know if you mentioned it, but there are no tax dollars used in the operation of E-470,
which I think is pretty great as a taxpayer.
So yeah, you are self-sufficient.
Yeah, I mean, the model was designed that the tolls pay for everything that needs to happen,
whether it be to pay the debt off to operate the road,
but also to rebuild the road or reconstruct the road or add to the road.
And so the unique part about E-470 was when they built it, it was really phase one of a 30 or 40 year program,
if you will, knowing that ultimately it's going to be an eight lane divided highway with all these interchanges,
but they only built what they needed at the time.
But the idea was the tolls collected would pay for all that when they needed it.
And so we need to build it until the capacity got there, until the development happened.
But there is no tax dollars.
It's self-sufficient with tolls.
As I mentioned earlier, we haven't had to raise tolls, which is even better,
because we've been able to pay for increasing debt over the years and increasing costs,
even through inflation that we've been able to hold tolls the same.
That's incredible.
And how do the tolls work, I guess?
I didn't know that I asked that.
Are they variable?
How do the tolls break down?
So tolls are basically assessed based on the number of axles.
And when I say axles, if you look at a car from the side,
our wheels are touching the ground.
So this would be a two-axle vehicle, and we charge you a rate per that.
And then if you have three axles, we charge you a little bit more.
If you have four, we charge you a little bit more.
And so it's fixed throughout the day.
We do have some variation in price by location, but it doesn't change.
It's not variable based on time of day or any of that.
It's just, you drive through it, you pay whatever the rate is,
based on the type of vehicle or number of axles your vehicle has.
Well, again, I don't know that I've ever been on a nicer road to surface.
Then E470, I mean, I'm really impressed.
It's clean.
Like you said, there's nothing on the side of the road.
As far as a driving experience goes, I mean, truly short of something in Europe,
this is about as nice as anything I've experienced.
So, job well done.
E470, you know, who knew a tollway could be cool, but here we are.
So, where do we find out more about E470, Joe?
Well, you'd go to our website, e470.com.
We're on Instagram.
We're on Facebook.
Yeah, I know you're on Instagram.
I'm just waiting for you to follow me back, but look at there.
Yeah, it's pretty neat thing we've got here in Colorado.
E470 and Joe and your team did a wonderful job doing what you're doing.
Appreciate your time today.
So, Joe Donahue, CEO and Executive Director of E470 and a car guy himself.
We really appreciate having you on that car show today.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
We'll do it again.
All right.
Thank you.
About this episode
Joe Donahue walks through how E-470 was built as an economic development corridor, why it stays congestion-free, and how its wide lanes, cameras, and 24/7 traffic center support operations. He also explains the move to cashless tolling, the billing system for occasional users, and how toll revenue funds maintenance and major expansion projects. Along the way, he highlights steady growth, toll stability, roadside assistance, and the road’s long-term plans for new capacity and interchanges.
On this bonus episode, Ryan talks with Joe Donahue, CEO and Executive Director of That Car Show sponsor E-470. And we did it properly; with Joe behind the wheel, driving the road he manages. This is a genuinely interesting conversation, and we dispel some myths, uncover some truths, and nerd out on what it takes to operate what's certainly one of the best-run roads in the country.
You can find E470 online at e470.com and on Instagram at @e470tollway.
It’s Joe Donahue, CEO and Executive Director of Colorado’s E-470, and it’s That Car Show.
