For most Coloradans, a car or truck is something you drive. For our state government, it’s something you milk. And then drive to extinction.

That, in fact, could sum up the overall approach to transportation policy by the Democrats who now dominate Colorado’s executive and legislative branches of government.

It was apparent in the omnibus transportation bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in 2021. The $5.4 billion, 10-year plan to build roads and bridges – as well as to set up electric vehicle charging stations, boost mass transit and mitigate air pollution – was funded by an array of complicated new fees that were largely vehicle based. New state fees were imposed on gas at the pump; on ride-share services; on retail deliveries, and even on registering an electric car.

Much the same approach is used in a new transportation proposal likely to emerge in the 2024 Legislature. The 19-page draft legislation would assess up to $29 in added, annual registration fees for vehicles based on their weight. A sliding scale would kick in on any vehicle weighing 3,500 pounds or more – i.e., over half the vehicles on the road – and would be in effect in the state’s 12 most populous counties. So, it would cover most Colorado cars and trucks.

The fees would pay for the creation of a state program called the “Vulnerable Road User Protection Enterprise.” It would fund, “system infrastructure improvements and other data-driven strategies … that reduce the number of collisions with motor vehicles that result in death or serious injury to vulnerable road users.” A vulnerable road user is “an individual who is unprotected by an outside shield when using a road.” Meaning, pedestrians and bicyclists.

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What rightly had rankled a lot of the 2021 bill’s critics was how much of the revenue raised from the fees wasn’t earmarked for the roads and bridges used by the very motorists who pay the tab. Nearly half the funding went to alternative transportation – mass transit and other “multimodal” projects; electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and the like.

The new bill, of course, amounts to more of the same.

We reluctantly supported the 2021 plan as the only realistic way to fund backlogged highway projects given the prevailing political climate. But the bill’s pie-in-the-sky spending on so much nonmotor vehicle transportation left us with big reservations.

So did the fact it was based on new “fees” that weren’t labeled “taxes” – even though they essentially are – to evade Colorado’s constitutional requirement that all new taxes be put to a popular vote.

That same sleight of hand is back with the new legislation, including the 2021 bill’s use of enterprise funds – slush funds, really – so the additional revenue doesn’t fall under the state’s constitutional spending caps. The new bill’s proponents aim to raise about $20 million a year.

You might find yourself wondering why basic infrastructure to protect pedestrians and bicyclists isn’t factored into any new road project or existing road upgrade. Or, why a whole new bureaucracy, supported by a new “fee,” is needed to fund such projects.

But you probably aren’t thinking like the starry-eyed politicians at the helm of our state government. They simply don’t like private vehicles, don’t want to widen our highways to accommodate them – and fully intend to penalize the public for driving them.

Our legislative dreamers evidently envision a future without cars. What’s supposed to replace them in that utopia is anyone’s guess. But until we get there, our politicians intend to tax – make that, “fee” – the motoring public into submission. And they’ll get to grow more government along the way.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board