The Gazette editorial board | Denver Gazette
A lot of motorists aren’t crazy about driving our crumbling and congested traffic corridors. But only a handful actually hates motor vehicles.
Unfortunately, that unrepresentative handful is overrepresented in our state legislature and the Governor’s Office. In some city halls, too. And they’d like nothing more than for the rest of us to quit driving and ride a bus or light rail, instead. Or ride a bike.
Which explains those empty bike lanes you see squeezing cars and trucks aside on busy transportation thoroughfares and neighborhood streets.
It also helps to explain the abysmal condition of Colorado’s highways, bridges and other basic transportation infrastructure. It’s getting worse by the day.
Although the powers that be wouldn’t care to admit it in so many words, they seem to be deliberately shortchanging our highways — scrimping on upgrades and expansion — in hopes of nudging us onto public transit.
Colorado’s basic transportation infrastructure in fact ranks 43rd — eighth worst in the nation — for its overall condition, according to the latest highway ratings released by Reason Magazine. Reason’s respected annual survey is closely watched as a gauge of public transportation policy. In Colorado, transportation policy has turned radically anti-car.
The recently released report found, “Colorado’s highways rank 45th in urban interstate pavement condition, 47th in rural interstate pavement condition, 35th in urban arterial pavement condition, 37th in rural arterial pavement condition, 19th in structurally deficient bridges, 40th in urban fatality rate, and 32nd in rural fatality rate.”
The report also found, “Colorado ranks 36th out of the 50 states in traffic congestion, and its drivers spend 36 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion,” and that, “Colorado worsened the most in capital-bridge disbursements (28th to 42nd).”