Vandals hacked several portable, electric traffic signs along the streets of Denver one day last week, changing the message to proclaim, “Cars Ruin Cities.” The same evening, a live recording of “The War on Cars” podcast was underway at the History Colorado Center near the State Capitol.

If only that mindset were confined to pranksters and podcasters. 

It has in fact captivated too many policymakers and planning departments in state and local government around our state. They are pushing policies that ignore how people actually choose to — and must — get around, jeopardizing Coloradans’ ability to get from point A to point B.

“Buffered” bike lanes with barriers to keep out cars are putting the squeeze on motor-vehicle traffic. Garish arrays of plastic bollards are sprouting up around intersections and along turn lanes. Underused buses have their own dedicated lanes as motorists are bottled up in adjoining lanes. In some cases, whole lanes are eliminated on busy thoroughfares as an effort at “traffic calming,” or on the pretext of providing turn lanes.

It all adds up to chaos at rush hour. 

Make no mistake, the attempt to elbow aside automobiles not only denies reality but also is an exercise in futility. Most Coloradans — by far — regularly drive a car. Roughly 90% of the time Coloradans go somewhere, they do so by car.

To be sure, every community has a small but vocal minority of dreamers who advocate fervently for a transportation utopia. They envision public transit, bicycles and, maybe, ride-sharing moving most people to work, school and shopping. Their hearts are in the right place, but they seem to forget how most people actually live.

The outsized influence of those voices helps explain the insidious effort to undermine cars: narrowing and reducing lanes while reallocating surface streets to less efficient modes of transportation. Bus lanes here. Bike paths there. A little congestion around the corner. All packaged as “progress.”

It is actually the opposite of progress.

Buses and light rail might be more efficient if more people used them, but few do — even fewer than just a few years ago.

Even in and around the state’s largest metro area, public transit ridership languishes roughly 38% below pre-pandemic levels — and even then, it’s low. RTD’s commuter share is just 3%. Away from Denver, especially along the Western Slope, it’s even lower — if it’s available.

When Winter finally decides to join us, who will line up for a bus in sub-zero temperatures unless they have no choice? Who will bike when the wind cuts deep and the black ice builds? Burying our heads in the snow, thinking we can magically fill buses, won’t make it so.

Colorado needs cars.

When we neglect our roads, bottlenecks build up. It means delays and also imperils public safety — impeding police, fire and ambulances from responding to emergencies.

As Denverite Eric Anderson recently wrote in a commentary published in The Gazette, anti-car activists “want to make driving so frustrating that drivers give up their cars.” That’s “not a bug but a feature of the system.”

Hacking a traffic sign is a publicity stunt. But when policymakers shed reality to shape policy around that thinking, they aren’t just inconveniencing people. They’re blocking society’s progress.