Yet another report released last week speaks to how Colorado is neglecting its highway infrastructure.

The Reason Foundation’s 29th annual Highway Report, released last Thursday, ranks all 50 states from best to worst on road-and-bridge quality based on traffic fatalities, pavement condition, congestion, deficient bridges and spending. At the top of the list are eastern states with an urban-rural dynamic similar to Colorado’s — first-place Virginia, followed by Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Where does Colorado rank? Way down at 42nd place. 

The cause of Colorado’s poor showing, as highlighted by Reason, is the dismal state of its rural roads. 

Colorado is lumped in with Alaska, California and Arizona as one of four states that “account for 44% of all poor-condition rural interstate mileage despite having only about 12.5% of total rural interstate mileage.”

Why can’t Colorado be like Virginia or North Carolina? Like Colorado, they’re states with rugged mountains.  Yet, somehow, they manage to keep their roads in better shape. That’s despite much more rainfall and much, much older roadways.

Colorado’s similarities to states like Virginia or North Carolina are noteworthy. All have major metropolises, which urban residents flee on weekends to recreate in the mountains. The same goes for Georgia and South Carolina at the southern tip of the Appalachians. And the number of people and cars is even heavier in these states; North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia all have at least 2 million more people, with South Carolina just behind Colorado’s Census-estimated 6 million residents in a smaller geographic area.

So, why the disparity in road condition? It comes down to priorities. Those states have elected policymakers who understand their citizens have to get from Point A to Point B efficiently — and with as little damage to their vehicles’ suspension as possible.

Colorado’s roads are crumbling because, by contrast, our state’s elected policymakers have decided to neglect them. Colorado’s leaders have been siphoning transportation funds away from highways to pay for everything from  barren bike lanes to mass-transit pipe dreams. 

And rural Coloradans arguably get shortchanged most. They pay their share of gas tax not to mention sales and income tax — and of course all the “fees” tacked onto every Coloradan’s vehicle registration, purportedly to fund transportation.

But as the Reason report makes clear, Colorado’s farm and ranch communities on the eastern plains, as well as its mountain towns, aren’t getting back their fair share in pavement. Motorists entering our state’s rural reaches across all our borders notoriously get a rude awakening. The pitted, potholed, cracked and rippled roads they encounter are startling. 

At least, they’re less likely to fall asleep behind the wheel. 

After 2024’s Hurricane Helene carved more scars upon the land in a few days than humans could in a few decades, the leaders in Virginia and North Carolina began restoring their rural mountain roadways. No wonder Reason ranked them so high. 

Those states’ elected officials are committed to supporting the kind transportation that really matters to most Americans — the roads that carry almost all our people and our freight.

Those states’ rural needs are the same as Colorado’s, but their politicians grasp what ours don’t: Light rail isn’t going to get melons from Rocky Ford to Denver. Only a highway can do that.

Take note, Gold Dome.