The Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (PPRTA) is a collaborative effort among six regional governments to improve and maintain roads and support public transit. The members of PPRTA are the cities of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, unincorporated El Paso County, and the towns of Green Mountain Falls, Ramah and Calhan.
The area’s most significant transportation concern is maintaining the aging infrastructure – roads, bridges, and drainage systems – in safe, reliable condition for public use. A major issue is maintaining roads and bridges that are already subject to overuse because of increasing population growth.
PPRTA has an establishing Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) between all of the five member governments that outlines the roles of the entity. The IGAs include details on:
- Purpose and Activities
- Allocation of Revenues
- Board of Directors membership, terms, and officers
- Powers of the Authority and the Board
- Boundaries
- Addition or deletion of parties or territory
The day-to-day work of PPRTA is performed by two full-time staff members and portions of time from several other staff members of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments (PPACG), under an administrative services agreement between PPACG and PPRTA.
The six member governments submit their payment requests to PPRTA staff members, who review the requests for budgetary and contractual compliance and process them for payment. Other functions of the staff are the optimization of sales/use tax collections, providing staff support to the Board and the Citizen Advisory Committee, financial reporting, preparation of the Annual Report to the Citizens, maintenance of the website, and field verification reviews of the capital, maintenance, and transit improvements.