Colorado highways are among the worst in the nation. That’s hardly news to anyone who travels across our state.
Only two states report a larger share of interstate highway in poorer condition than Colorado. Less-traveled highways in our state are even worse.
In 2021, the Democrat-controlled legislature passed a $5.4 billion package of new “fees” – including a yearly increase in fuel taxes and that irritating 29-cent charge Coloradans pay on every Amazon order – supposedly to boost the transportation budget.
Despite that infusion of money, Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) predicts the condition of every category of state-maintained highways will get even worse over the next seven years.
In 2022, CDOT analyzed 9,083 miles of state-maintained highway based on drivability life (DL) and categorized them as follows:
- High DL, drivability life of 11-25 years.
- Moderate DL, 4-10 years of drivability remaining.
- Low DL, 0-3 years of drivability remaining.
As illustrated HERE , the longest line on the chart shows 823 miles of CDOT-maintained highway where drivability life is completely exhausted (0 years of drivability remaining). The drivability chart is dominated by highways with 10 or fewer years remaining – 71% of all CDOT miles.
“About 30 percent of the network rated as Moderate is forecasted to deteriorate to Low Drivability Life within four years,” reads CDOT’s Transportation Asset Management Plan.
By 2031, barely one-fourth of interstate highways in Colorado will be in good condition; other state highways will be even worse.
Many communities may complain about their highways, but the roads in my home of Kit Carson County near the Kansas border rival the most-dangerous driving surfaces in Colorado.
Visitors from Kansas and parts east enter Colorado on Interstate 70. Until late last year, the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign greeting westbound traffic was instantly accompanied by the teeth-rattling rumble of tires traversing a concrete highway falling apart. Embarrassed by social media posts, CDOT put a band-aid repair on the first half mile inside the state line.
This year, CDOT issued a contract for a half-baked, on-the-cheap project to “resurface” 23 miles of I-70 starting at the Kansas border. For the first 13 miles, a thin layer of new asphalt will cover the crumbling concrete beneath. Potholes are not fixed but instead filled with asphalt – a temporary patch soon to be eroded by underlying decay.
For the next 10 westbound miles, CDOT has ordered a better but still inadequate repair. Contractors grind up old asphalt and replace it with six inches of new asphalt. However, asphalt doesn’t last nearly as long as concrete, which is the foundation for most I-70 surfaces leading to Denver.
CDOT’s public announcement of this project laughably claims, “Resurfacing can greatly extend the life of the asphalt pavement; (s)ome highways may last more than 50 years with periodic resurfacing of the top layer of asphalt and timely repairs” (emphasis added).
As they used to say on Saturday Night Live, “Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!”
CDOT’s own documents prove that timely repairs clearly are not a priority for the Colorado Transportation Commission. They arrogantly think that little Colorado can “save the planet” by discouraging Coloradans from driving at all. But walking or biking isn’t a realistic option in the 50-plus counties beyond the Front Range.
Of course, slapdash repairs are a better than no repairs at all. Although CDOT ordered a band-aid repair for westbound I-70 near the Kansas border, the last 13 miles of eastbound I-70 approaching Kansas get no love at all. This stretch of highway is a minefield of enormous potholes. The shoulder is littered with chunks of concrete which were broken loose when unsuspecting drivers hit potholes at 75 mph.
For eastbound I-70 drivers, the most-welcome sight is the Kansas border. The sudden transition under a stateline bridge from outrageous disrepair on the Colorado side to a uniformly smooth surface in Kansas perfectly illustrates the two states’ disparate attitudes toward highway maintenance.
Two secondary US highways in my home county are equally embarrassing.
US-24 parallels I-70 and is preferred by local residents and farm traffic hauling grain or cattle. Craters on US-24 were so dangerous earlier this summer that locals began using spray paint to point out the worst hazards. An embarrassed CDOT instructed the local crew to fill potholes. But with traffic often diverted to US-24 due to construction and weather closures on I-70, this highway will get worse fast.
North-south traffic travels US-385 which parallels Colorado’s eastern border. This two-lane highway rarely has more than a few inches of shoulder but is a favorite route for oversize loads, including wind farm components and off-road equipment that sometimes covers the entire roadway.
Oversize loads pay expensive fees to use US-385, but those fees clearly aren’t reinvested in road maintenance. Highway shoulders are disintegrating so badly that the white line often disappears. Elsewhere the center stripe looks like yellow islands surrounded by water standing in endless “cracks” which have been patched and re-patched for years.
For this, Coloradans can thank Governor Polis and his appointees to the Transportation Commission whose unwritten policy must be: “Make drivers miserable.”
A May feature in the New York Times heralded Colorado’s “bold new approach to highways – not building them.”
“(T)hat new vision was catalyzed by climate change,” the Times reported. “Gov. Jared Polis signed a law that required the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent within 30 years. As the state tried to figure out how it would get there, it zeroed in on drivers. … To reduce emissions, Coloradans would have to drive less.”
CDOT policy envisions a shift of “a quarter to a third” of highway construction funds toward transit and “mitigation,” which means getting people out of automobiles. It pays lip-service to “maintaining a state of good repair for roads, bridges, tunnels, and other transportation infrastructure.” But any driver crossing our state experiences a much different reality.
Many elected leaders, from Weld and Adams counties in the north to El Paso County in the south, obviously think it’s better to expand roads so drivers can travel efficiently than to leave them stuck in stop-and-go traffic. I will defer to them to argue the merits of enlarging highways along the Front Range. However, in rural areas transit and multimodal (mostly walking and biking) are impractical because county seats and major commerce hubs are often 60 to 100 miles apart.
What rural Coloradans want most from the Governor and his Transportation Commission is an ongoing commitment to repair and properly maintain the roads we already have – roads which by CDOT’s own reckoning have fallen into a state of un-drivability. Rural Coloradans shouldn’t be cast off like second-class citizens who must accept ruined tires, destroyed wheel alignments, or in worst cases loss of control of your vehicle as the price of traveling our state’s highways.
Neither Polis nor the Commission seem to care that good highways are essential to rural life. Nine northeastern counties in CDOT District 11 have been without representation on the commission for several months, a vacancy that lies squarely at the feet of Polis who has purged the commission of members who prioritize maintaining rural roads.
Sometimes the War on Rural Colorado is waged aggressively. When it comes to rural roads, however, it’s waged by outright neglect.