Denver’s Road Diet Disaster: When Progressive Policy Hits Your Driveway

In yet another entry of government knows best, The Denver Gazette reports on the uproar in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood over a controversial “road diet” project on Alameda Avenue. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “road diet,” it’s not about eating less pavement. It’s the newest gem from the world of woke urban planning — where instead of expanding roadways to accommodate population growth and increased traffic, they narrow lanes and eliminate turn options to force you out of your evil internal-combustion-mobile and onto a scooter.

The city’s plan would slim down Alameda from Logan Street to Colorado Boulevard, remove dual-turn lanes, and turn one of the lanes into a center median. The idea? Reduce speeds and “calm traffic.” The reality? Pissed-off drivers, jammed-up intersections, and Washington Park residents rediscovering what it feels like to be on the wrong end of progressive policy implementation.

The Bullet Point Brief

• What’s a road diet? It’s when traffic planners decide to punish you for driving by removing travel lanes and pretending they’re “calming traffic.” Translation: “we hate your car.”
• Wash Park revolt: The very folks who probably compost their yoga mats and vote blue every cycle are now livid because they can’t make a left turn on their own damn street.
• City didn’t ask first: No public vote. No mailer. Just a “surprise!” from Denver DOT. Because nothing screams community like top-down policy with no input.
• “Calm traffic” = rage drivers: Residents report bottlenecks, increased travel times, and more fender-benders. But hey, at least your speed is “calmed.”
• Growth ignored: Since 2019, Colorado’s population has grown by 5.5% — over 300,000 new people — and what have we added to our roads? Basically nothing but orange cones and bad ideas.

My Bottom Line

This article gave me the perfect excuse to update the Big Woke Dictionary. Under “R” now sits “Road Diet,” defined as: A progressive transportation scheme where lanes for cars are sacrificed—nay, ritually purged—in the name of “safety” and “walkability.” It’s like urban planning meets passive-aggressive revenge on anyone who owns a Ford F-150. Roads are “slimmed down” to add bike lanes, planters, or bus stops no one uses, while commuters stew in gridlock and ask why traffic is worse than a Marxist group project. Usually proposed by someone who owns a folding bicycle and has very strong feelings about curb paint.

Let’s call this Alameda disaster exactly what it is: performative urbanism. It’s the municipal equivalent of slapping a “COEXIST” bumper sticker on a Prius while running over common sense in a crosswalk.

The bitter irony? I’m willing to bet good money the fine folks of Washington Park — bless their bike-lane-loving, recycling-bin-washing hearts — are generally all-in on whatever progressive policy sails down from Capitol Hill. But now that one of those policies landed smack in their backyard and turned their afternoon commute into a yoga-breathing exercise in restraint, it’s all, “Wait a minute! This sucks!”

Yes. It does. Welcome to the consequences.

Denver has exploded in population. Since 2019 alone, Colorado’s grown by 5.5% — that’s over 300,000 more people on roads that haven’t changed in width since we were all buying bag phones at RadioShack. A sane society would look at that and say, “Hey, maybe it’s time to build more lanes, add turn options, maybe even, I dunno, make commuting easier?” But no. We’re not sane. We’re Colo-RAD-oh. And according to our urban planning overlords, what you need isn’t more road. What you need is to go on a “diet.” A road diet.

Fatso.

We’re punishing drivers instead of planning for them. We’re blaming congestion on people existing rather than adapting infrastructure to meet the demands of reality. This isn’t traffic management — it’s ideological vengeance with a glossy rendering and a grant from the feds.

Here’s the kicker: this policy isn’t even about improving flow. It’s about forcing behavior change. It’s the same logic behind banning plastic bags and taxing soda. You’re not trusted to make the “right” choice — so they’ll take away the options until you’re walking to work barefoot with a compostable latte.

The Great Suburban Normie better wake up. If they can shrink Alameda without a vote, they can shrink your road next. And by the time it hits your driveway, it’ll be too late to make a U-turn — because they already took the turn lane away.