Road and bridge projects in Colorado will lose tens of millions of dollars in funding over the next two years under state lawmakers’ proposed spending plan — one of the largest cuts being considered as legislators look to close a $1.2 billion budget shortfall. 

The budget package introduced last week would cut $64 million from the State Highway Fund in the 2025-26 fiscal year and another $50 million the following fiscal year. Lawmakers say they would eventually make up for the reduction by boosting funding in later years. 

The cuts, however, could have immediate impacts for a running list of the state’s highest priority highway projects. Leaders on the Western Slope fear it will delay planned infrastructure investments that they say have already languished. 

“Transportation is historically very underfunded in the state of Colorado,” said Margaret Bowes, executive director for the Colorado Association of Ski Towns, “and it is just so critical to mountain communities.” 

Unreliable transportation, from irregular bus lines to poor road conditions, can threaten rural residents’ ability to commute to their jobs, especially for those who’ve been priced out of the ski towns where they work. As vacationers continue to flock to resort areas year-round, many communities are also “being overwhelmed with too many cars” that accelerate road deterioration, exacerbate congestion and threaten safety, Bowes said. 

Cuts to state highway funding would primarily affect the Colorado Department of Transportation’s 10-year plan for capital projects, which represents hundreds of planned and ongoing infrastructure initiatives throughout the state. 

The agency claims the plan, which encompasses a litany of projects along Interstate 70 and other mountain corridors, amounts to the largest investment in rural roads in recent history. 

Reductions in state highway funding won’t affect ongoing construction, including the $700 million Floyd Hill project, or funding for CDOT’s bus programs — Bustang, Snowstang and Pegasus. 

It could, however, impact how many projects are included in the plan’s next update, according to CDOT spokesperson Matt Inzeo.

“I’m a little speechless at the thought of that,” said Bowes, who is also the outgoing director of the I-70 Coalition, which advocates for more transit investments along the mountain corridor. 

The current list of projects that have not yet made it to construction include safety and traffic improvements along I-70 in Dowd Canyon west of Vail, road repairs in Glenwood Canyon and new passing lanes on a notorious stretch of U.S. Highway 40 between Craig and Steamboat Springs. 

Other projects include new transit centers, expanded bus fleets and improvements to highway exits and intersections.

Risk of pushing projects ‘further down the list’ 

Bowes said there are I-70 corridor projects going back 15 years that were identified as a priority for the state but still haven’t moved forward. She worries budget cuts could make the growing to-do list even longer. 

Bowes points to Exit 205 in between Dillon and Silverthorne as a prime example. The I-70 interchange has long been a source of strife for locals who’ve contended with bottlenecked traffic as motorists fight to get onto the interstate. 

The issue reached crisis levels in January of last year when hordes of drivers leaving from ski resorts across the region converged at the exit after blizzard conditions closed mountain passes and highways, resulting in hours of standstill traffic. 

While local officials have grown louder in their calls for CDOT to improve the interchange to help alleviate congestion, the agency has moved to prioritize other projects along the mountain corridor and recently rejected ideas that would have significantly overhauled the area. 

“The Exit 205 project is quite far down on the list and now, based on the pending state funding cuts, it could go even further down the list,” Bowes said, “and so the needs are great, the list is long and it’s really disheartening to see the funding for those much needed projects be reduced.” 

Lawmakers said they were in a lose-lose scenario with the state budget this year as a more than $1 billion deficit forced a slew of tough decisions. 

The Joint Budget Committee, a six-member group of lawmakers tasked with crafting the state’s budget plan, maintains that cuts to transit and other programs helped avoid worst-case scenarios for Medicaid and K-12 education, which most in the legislature viewed as the highest-priority items to protect.

Committee Chair Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, said it’s “unlikely” the state will see any “measurable impact” from the transit cuts being proposed, adding that money for the State Highway Fund makes up a fraction of CDOT’s overall budget. 

The agency maintains an annual budget of around $2 billion, with the bulk of that money coming from the federal government. Lawmakers’ budget plan would change a 2021 infrastructure law that set aside $747 million over the next decade for the State Highway Fund and would repay the lost revenue by 2033. 

“This is a drop in the overall bucket of what we invest in transportation in the state,” Bridges said. “But it will have a measurable impact on the state legislature’s ability to fully fund public K-12 education … to ensure that we are taking care of the least among us in desperate need of health care through Medicaid.” 

Federal uncertainty and fear of delays 

Local leaders, however, say uncertainty at the federal level could compound state cuts. 

President Donald Trump and his administration recently unveiled a policy to withhold federal transit funding for states with declining birth and marriage rates, as well as those seen as standing in the way of immigration officials’ work. 

Colorado’s birth rate is among the lowest in the nation, and the state maintains several laws limiting how much local law enforcement can interact with immigration officers. 

“If there’s further cuts, that could be detrimental to our communities,” said Brittany Dixon, executive director for Club 20, which represents Western Slope counties. “It’s the current reality, and we have to look at what’s in front of us right now.”

Dixon said rural communities have already seen the impacts of infrastructure failures on their local economies, referencing the U.S. 50 bridge closure in Gunnison last year that significantly restricted access to the community during the summer tourism season. 

Any delays in road and bridge projects in the High Country would be a “tumbleweed of unintended consequences that just keeps growing and growing and growing,” Dixon said. “What impact is this going to have on businesses, what impact is this going to have on our tourism community if people can’t get from point A to point B?”

Transit advocates say, too, that the longer a project takes to get off the ground, the harder it becomes to finish. 

“Every time you lose funding for a bus replacement or a facility project or mitigation on a highway, that results in the project’s costs going up,” said Ann Rajewski, executive director for the Colorado Association of Transit Agencies. 

Along with cuts to the State Highway Fund, lawmakers are looking to claw back around $71 million in unspent grant money for multimodal transit projects such as bike lanes, most of which are concentrated along the Front Range. 

Budget writers also eliminated a $7 million program to improve municipalities’ downtown infrastructure. Known as the Revitalizing Main Streets grant program, the initiative began during the COVID-19 pandemic to support businesses but was later expanded to include sidewalk expansions, enhanced public spaces and bus stop safety improvements. 

The budget proposal was approved in the Senate last week and must now pass the House before a final review by the Joint Budget Committee. After that, it goes to the governor’s desk. The legislative session ends on May 7.