Colorado’s booming growth shows no sign of slowing down. A leading estimate has us adding another 3 million people by 2050. How we choose to accommodate this growth will make or break our state’s future, and one of the first items to address is transportation.

People are moving here faster than our current roads, bridges, buses, and trains can handle, and we’re already paying the price (as anyone who’s spent countless hours stuck in traffic will irritably remind you). Every moment we delay only makes the problem worse.

The good news: We’ve already found a bipartisan agreement to fix our roads, expand multi-modal options (trains, buses, bike lanes, etc.) and plan for our state’s population boom. In fact, it’s been ready for a year, and could have appeared on the 2017 ballot for voter approval.

The bad news: A handful of far-right lawmakers in the state Senate have derailed our comprehensive statewide transportation plan by blocking it from the ballot and rejecting last year’s bipartisan process. Instead, they’ve embraced a funding scheme that fails to fix our roads at a rate that would keep pace with population growth. It makes almost no allowance for multi-modal options, and it loots money normally set aside for healthcare and education.

Pulling from already-limited health care and education funding isn’t the answer. Unless you like the idea of sitting in the same traffic AND more underfunded schools and healthcare, the GOP transportation plan isn’t for you.

The Colorado Department of Transportation estimates that it will cost $9.8 billion over the next 10 years to fix our transportation infrastructure. The GOP proposal would provide $3.5 billion – about one third of what’s needed to keep pace with Colorado’s rapid growth.

It also barely funds multi-modal options, a crucial tool in reducing traffic congestion and a necessity for people who can’t afford a car. Funding for local governments to pursue their own badly needed transportation projects, a key component of last year’s bipartisan plan, has also disappeared.

To pay for their plan, Senate Republicans propose diverting money from the Colorado General Fund to transportation infrastructure projects. That’s $350 million per year that would otherwise go toward a fund primarily spent on health care and education. The GOP plan is skimpy on the specifics, punting to some future state legislature the question of which programs would absorb the consequences.

If Republicans really want to fund transportation with $350 million per year that would otherwise go to a fund devoted to health care, schools, and higher education, they need to explain which specific programs they believe should lose out on that $350 million.

This strikes us as a pretty big detail to leave out. If Republicans really want to fund transportation with $350 million per year that would otherwise go to a fund devoted to health care, schools, and higher education, they need to explain which specific programs they believe should lose out on that $350 million.

We already know there’s a better way, and it’s one that Republicans, county and municipal leaders, and countless other business and nonprofit organizations supported less than a year ago. The 2017 bipartisan transportation bill provides the necessary funding to keep pace with our state’s rapid growth. It’s a comprehensive plan to fix our roads and bridges, gives municipalities and counties the resources they need for their own transportation projects, and expands multimodal options and walkable, bikeable communities.

Coloradans have made it clear that they don’t want to be forced to choose between a good education, health care and transportation. We’ve spent years working toward a bipartisan solution that provides for all of the above, and now it’s sitting on the shelf just waiting for legislators to put it to a vote of the people.