Tom Norton’s guest opinion in The Greeley Tribune is less a column than a flare shot over the hood of a stalled state government. Norton, a former Greeley mayor, former Colorado Senate president, and former CDOT executive director under Gov. Bill Owens, argues that Colorado has drifted badly off course on transportation and that the state needs to get serious again about roads, maintenance, capacity, and long-term infrastructure planning.
Norton says today’s CDOT has embraced a backward philosophy, pointing to shelved road projects, flat maintenance budgets despite heavy construction inflation, longer drive times, more injury crashes, and poor road-condition rankings. He contrasts that with an earlier era focused on expansion, upkeep, and financing tools like HOT lanes, public-private partnerships, and bonding to get projects moving before inflation ate them alive.
He then makes the political case plainly. Norton backs State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer’s transportation plan, saying it would redirect spending toward road improvement, tap money already sitting in project accounts, expand financing tools, and restore a stronger role for local governments in transportation planning. His argument is that Colorado does not need more fashionable excuses. It needs functioning infrastructure and leadership willing to treat it like a priority again.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Tom Norton says Colorado’s transportation policy is veering into the ditch. He argues CDOT has delayed important road projects, held maintenance budgets flat, and left drivers with longer commutes, rougher roads, and more dangerous travel. Bold strategy, Cotton.
- He compares that with the Bill Owens era, when CDOT expanded capacity, improved road conditions, and used tools like HOT lanes, public-private partnerships, and bonding to speed up projects before inflation turned them into museum pieces.
- Norton makes a big point about maintenance. He cites research suggesting preventive upkeep saves major money later, which is one of those shocking truths government keeps rediscovering right after it ignores it.
- He also argues local governments should have a stronger hand in transportation planning, saying communities understand their long-term needs better than a Denver-based planning apparatus. Imagine that. The people who actually live with the traffic might know something about the traffic.
- His larger point is political as much as practical. Norton says transportation needs to become a top-tier issue again, because roads and highways are not some side quest. They are the skeleton of the state economy, and right now the people running the bones are acting like cartilage is optional.
My Bottom Line
Tom Norton is right, and there is not much to improve on when a man already lands the punch square on the nose. This is one of those rare times where the best service is not to reinvent the point, but to underline it in red and shove it back across the desk. Colorado’s transportation priorities are upside down, and the people in charge have spent too much time chasing ideology, optics, and pet abstractions while the actual system people use every single day keeps falling behind.
And let me add just this much from the cheap seats. I am not speaking about this as some guy who glanced at a chart and got emotional over a pothole. I work in this world. I serve on the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization. I chair the North I-25 Coalition. I sit on the Highway 34 Coalition, the Highway 52 Coalition, and chair the High Plains Boulevard coalition. I say that for one reason only: I am in this work enough to know the difference between hard reality and bureaucratic fantasy. And under the Polis administration, CDOT executive management has been an abject failure.
That needs to be said carefully and clearly, because there is an important distinction here. I have tremendous respect for the engineers, planners, and transportation professionals at CDOT, especially in Region 4. There are dedicated people inside that department who know their craft, know these corridors, and work hard for Colorado. The failure is not theirs. The failure is political leadership out of Denver that has set the wrong priorities, sent the wrong signals, and left the people doing the real work holding the bag.
Norton is right that this should rise to the top of the gubernatorial campaign. It should not be buried under the usual pile of slogans and side issues. Transportation is not optional. It is not glamorous, and maybe that is the problem. But if you cannot move people, commerce, freight, and families safely and efficiently, you are not governing well. You are managing decline with a press release. Colorado needs a course correction, and on this one, Tom Norton called it exactly as it is.
Source: The Greeley Tribune
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