There is broad agreement that we need to fix our roads — and while new road pavement data just released by CDOT shows that historic investment in recent years is making a measurable impact and improving quality across the state, there is a lot more work to do.
Colorado has made these major transportation investments through three landmark bipartisan bills in recent years — Senate Bill 260 in 2021 and Senate Bills 184 and 230 in 2024 — funding roads, bridges, transit, freight and EV infrastructure. In 2027 alone, these bills will deliver over $600 million in new transportation funding, most of which is dedicated to roads and bridges.
Through compromise, coalition building and creative solutions — the Colorado way — we pioneered a user-contributes model for shared infrastructure. Now, after several years of putting new dollars to work, we can see tangible progress even at a time when inflation in costs eroded the buying power of a dollar. Let’s talk about what’s working and how we keep up the momentum.
Senate Bill 260 was landmark, bipartisan legislation championed by legislative leadership and the Polis administration as well as conservation groups, the construction industry, local governments, truckers and the business community. The bill set up ongoing funding for Colorado’s roads, so everyone — from drivers of gas and electric cars and diesel trucks to those who benefit from delivery vehicles — pay their fair share.
The vast majority of funding from Senate Bill 260 — about three-quarters of more than $5 billion projected over a decade — goes to roads, bridges and tunnels. These dollars are contributing to the delivery of projects like the expansion of I-25 North, I-70 Vail Pass, I-70 Floyd Hill, more than $100 million in repairs to the Eisenhower Johnson Memorial tunnels, and the largest investment in rural road repairs in modern Colorado history. The 2021 bill has helped leverage major federal grants for safety projects on roads like U.S. 287 in northern Colorado and U.S. 160 Elmore’s East in southwestern Colorado. And it has also helped us improve over 2,500 miles of rural roads.
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The law also gives travelers more of the choices people demand and includes funding streams to support electric vehicles and the build-out of a reliable charging infrastructure across Colorado.
Senate Bills 184 and 230 set up breakthrough funding streams for transit and passenger rail, leveraging user fees to support statewide investments like passenger rail from Denver to Fort Collins in partnership with RTD, Mountain Rail, popular Bustang routes and local transit services offered by partners across the state. These services support Colorado’s record as the largest rural transit provider in the country. And these targeted investments are separate from core road and bridge programs through CDOT.
Colorado can invest more in transportation using the same pathways that led to the historic successes of these bills.
We are seeing clear results from investing more resources in our transportation vision. New data released last week shows that pavement condition on Colorado’s largest roads has improved across the board. The percentage of interstate pavement in good condition has risen above 50% — the highest in more than a decade — while the percentage in poor condition has fallen to 1.6%, the lowest since 2018.
Similar progress is evident on major roads such as U.S. 6, U.S. 40, U.S. 160 and dozens of others. For these non-interstate roads on the National Highway System and maintained by the state, 2025 data shows pavement in good condition rising to 42.5% — its highest level since 2018 — with pavement in poor condition dropping to 2.4%, the lowest level measured since 2018.
And at the same time, we are bringing passenger rail service to market at record speed. Every week we get outreach from other states asking how they can replicate what Colorado is doing through collaboration with railroads.
Results like this are hard to come by. They take years to plan and deliver, requiring both the investment and the patience of the public, especially during construction — as anyone who has sat through a rock blasting traffic hold at Floyd Hill knows. We always work to minimize disruption for Coloradans, but the results mean improved safety and reduced traffic.
Colorado completed the I-25 Gap project ahead of schedule and under budget, which is always a good goal to push toward. These are the results Coloradans deserve, and while recent investments don’t solve everything, they set up a foundation for doing even more in the years to come.
In the last hours of the 2026 legislative session, lawmakers passed House Bill 1430 to establish a new option to improve our roads. A Road Enterprise with seed funding — a down payment — can now collect road user charges specifically for road repair.
It’s time for an all-hands-on-deck dialogue about how to use this tool and others. Let’s work together as we did on Senate Bill 260, and keep making our roads better.
Shoshana Lew is the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation.
Lisa Kaufmann is the former chief of staff to Gov. Jared Polis and current senior strategic advisor to the governor.
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