The latest brain-melting headline from Complete Colorado (written by one-of-the-good-guys Mark Hillman) walks us through a revelation that anyone who’s ever bounced down I-25 or sacrificed an axle to an Eastern Plains State Highway pothole already knows: our roads are garbage, and it’s not because we’re broke. Nope. It’s because the state legislature made a conscious decision to ignore asphalt and go all-in on unicorn farts and rails to nowhere. The piece lays out how Colorado’s transportation cash has been re-routed like an overambitious Google Maps error, away from roads and straight into “climate scoring” boondoggles.
The Bullet Point Brief
- CDOT isn’t fixing roads, they’re grading them based on greenhouse gas emissions like it’s a Whole Foods produce aisle.
- Legislators diverted billions away from road maintenance to fund magical thinking like bike lane expansions and rail transit.
- Colorado now ranks DEAD LAST among western states in transportation spending per capita. Even California looks like they’re trying.
- The state’s focus is on public transit options no one wants while ignoring traffic gridlock that makes daily life miserable for the 99%.
- Infrastructure policy is now dictated by climate cult metrics, not safety, mobility, or actual transportation needs.
My Bottom Line
Let me break it down the way your overpriced government consultant won’t: Colorado’s roads are trashed because the people running this state decided they don’t matter anymore. Safety? Efficiency? God forbid we build a damn lane mile anymore. Nope, we’re too busy calculating the carbon guilt of asphalt while shoveling billions into fantasy trains and freshly painted bike lanes that no one’s using past Boulder.
Here’s what this really is: another green energy grift disguised as “modern” planning. And while Gov. Choo-Choo dreams about train tracks connecting Denver to Neverland, every single one of us sits in rush hour, wondering how we became an afterthought in our own damn state. We’ve got smart engineers ready to build real infrastructure, but instead, they’re told to measure tire smoke with digital clipboards straight outta La-La Land.
CDOT no longer stands for Colorado Department of Transportation; it’s now the Climate Doctrine of Transit. And legislators? Don’t bother trying to find them, they probably got stuck behind a parked e-bike or missed their bus trying to punish you for having the audacity to drive your kid to soccer practice.
Let’s get this out of the way, I didn’t just stumble into the transportation fight last week with a stack of talking points and a hashtag. I’ve been deep in the weeds of Colorado’s infrastructure circus for a couple of decades now. I’ve served on the State Transportation Advisory Council and the Colorado Freight Advisory Council. Right now, I chair the North I-25 Coalition, the High Plains Boulevard Coalition, and the Freedom Parkway Coalition, because apparently I collect coalitions like some people collect vintage vinyl. I’m a past Chair – and still an active member – of the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization Planning Council. Oh, and I also sit on the Highway 34 Coalition and Chair the GoNoCo34 Transportation Management Organization. TL;DR: if it moves people or freight in Northern Colorado, I’ve probably been in the room arguing about it.
And yeah, we’ve had wins. Take North I-25, for example. CDOT originally planned to widen it somewhere around the time your grandkids would be retiring – in 2075 (seriously!). We pushed, we fought, and we got it done 50 years earlier. That’s not a miracle, it’s just what happens when you stop asking nicely and start making noise.
But let’s not pretend it’s all sunshine and smooth pavement. I’ve also watched transportation dollars get yanked from our roads and tossed into the magical unicorn fund for “green transit innovation,” also known as “trains to nowhere and buses no one rides.” You can see Governor Gondola’s green fingerprints all over it; every policy dripping with forced urban utopia and a “vision” where you live in a stacked Lego condo above a coffee shop you can’t afford, all within waddling distance of a light rail that doesn’t run anywhere near your job.
Live in Weld County? Eastern Plains? Sorry, no train for you. No road, either. Just a smug shrug from Denver and a bike map you didn’t ask for.
And then there’s Will Toor, Boulder’s answer to the question “What if Captain Planet ran energy policy?” Since Polis took the crown, Will’s been running the Colorado Energy Office and scribbling out the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap – a dystopian bedtime story about how you’ll heat your home, what you’ll cook on, and how you’ll get to work without the carbon-sin of owning a damn car. His dream world? One where you ride a scooter to your shared kitchen pod and microwave tofu under a windmill.
The playbook is clear: make driving a living hell until you throw up your hands and embrace the electric unicycle revolution. Don’t like it? Tough. In Will’s World, roads are relics, cars are evil, and if you live anywhere past the last RTD stop, you might as well start walking now.
If you ever wondered whether your state cares about commuters like you and me, the folks who put in long hours and expect clean, safe roads in return for all those taxes, we just got our answer: No. But hey, at least we’ve got more bus stops for ghosts and Instagrammable bike paths no one rides.
