Rural Colorado is falling apart – literally. In this latest installment of the “Rural Reckoning” series by Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette, journalist Michael Braithwaite does what the ruling class in Denver refuses to do: give rural Coloradans a damn voice. This particular piece zooms in on the absolutely pathetic condition of rural highways and the even more pathetic levels of funding to fix them.
The article features Colorado State Senator Byron Pelton, who represents northeastern Colorado and is one of the few lawmakers in the building who actually understands how bad rural infrastructure really is. He’s lived it. He’s driven it. And he’s fighting for it. While the roads crumble under John Deere and Peterbilt tires, the Denver/Boulder cartel in power reroutes money meant for road repair into expensive train fantasies and transit dreams that don’t serve the people who feed this state.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Rural roads are falling apart, and so is the state’s will to fix them. Nearly half of the state’s lane miles are in poor condition. The worst of them? In rural Colorado.
- Senator Byron Pelton tells it like it is. Rural highways are “life or death” infrastructure, not luxury add-ons. But the metro elite treat them like some backwoods inconvenience.
- The state keeps shifting funding away from roads. Since 2009, the gas tax hasn’t increased, but costs have. Now, money meant for roads is being siphoned into transit, despite it serving a tiny portion of Coloradans.
- Colorado is already $1 billion short annually on maintenance. Yes, billion with a “B.” But we somehow always find money for another train study or bike lane in Boulder.
- CDOT is literally prioritizing corridors with no roads. That’s not a joke. “Equity-based funding” now sends money to areas where roads don’t exist. You can’t make this stuff up.
My Bottom Line
Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll scream it again: The urban/rural divide is not a right-wing fever dream. It’s a real, measurable, asphalt-cracking, tire-blowing fact. And no one’s getting screwed more than the ranchers, truckers, and families living east of I-25.
My friend Senator Byron Pelton knows this, not because someone told him, but because he’s lived it. He served as a county commissioner and now fights as a state senator. And I couldn’t be prouder of him.
But the real culprit here is the elite utopian fantasyland that Jared Polis and his progressive minions operate from – one where rural Coloradans don’t exist, and if they do, they should shut up and ride a bike. They think if they make driving miserable enough, we’ll ditch our pickups and hop on the train.
But here’s the thing: we’ll stay in our trucks, and we’ll stay pissed, and one day, you’ll realize the “last mile” of every solution starts in rural Colorado. And if that “last mile” is full of potholes, it’s because the people in charge don’t give a damn about fixing it.
