Are We Really “Paying Twice” For I-25 Toll Lanes? Here’s the Truth.

Recently, I took some written testimony I gave to CDOT’s Transportation Commission, cleaned it up, and sent it to a few local newspapers as an op-ed. Shockingly, none of them have rushed to print a conservative county commissioner calling out the state for not building roads. So instead of holding my breath, I posted it on my website HERE and, like I always do, shared the link on social media below…

That’s when the comments started flying. The post “blew up” with a lot of understandable frustration from Colorado motorists. And let me be clear: I share that frustration. But a lot of what I saw in the comments was just flat-out wrong about how these projects are actually funded and who’s calling the shots.

As a former Johnstown Town Councilman, Mayor, and now a Weld County Commissioner, I’ve been in the transportation trenches for more than 25 years. My motivation has always been simple: build and maintain the damn roads. But over those years I’ve learned some hard, ugly truths about how the Colorado Legislature, the Governor’s office, and CDOT actually play this game.

I want to walk you through some of that here – not to defend the system, but so you’re better equipped to join me in the chorus of fixing our damn roads.

A commenter summed up how a lot of people feel about tolling:

“Toll revenue: Highway lanes that taxpayers pay to construct, then pay to use. It’s the grift that keeps on giving.”

I get that anger. If you think the system is a shell game, you’re not crazy.

But on North I-25, especially Segments 5–8, the real “grift” isn’t at the toll gantry. It’s in how the state refuses to honestly fund highway capacity, then forces us into toll-backed, fee-funded, climate-branded workarounds just to keep people from dying on a two-lane interstate.

Let’s walk through this in plain English.

What’s Being Built Where?

On I-25 North between Denver and Fort Collins:

• Segments 6–8 (Berthoud to Fort Collins) are largely done: a third lane in each direction, express/toll lanes, rebuilt interchanges, and safety upgrades. (Associated Construction Publications)
• Segment 5 (Mead to Berthoud) – the last two-lane choke point – is finally under construction now. When it’s finished, we’ll have at least three lanes each way from Denver to Fort Collins. (northerncoloradoprospers.com)

Two types of lanes matter here:

1. General-purpose lanes – the normal lanes everyone can use for free.
2. Express lanes – optional tolled lanes you can buy your way into when time matters more than money.

The question is: who actually pays for which piece?

Segments 6–8: Yes, Taxpayers Helped

CDOT is pretty open about how they funded Segments 6–8:

• Segment 6 (Berthoud–Johnstown)
  • Total project cost: about $305 million.
  • Funding includes a $20 million federal BUILD grant to add an express tolled lane each way between SH 402 and SH 56. (NFRMPO)
• Segments 7 & 8 (Johnstown–Fort Collins)
  • Total project cost: about $302 million. (Colorado Department of Transportation)
  • Funding includes:
    • A $15 million federal TIGER grant,
    • More than $25 million in local money from communities along the corridor, (Colorado Department of Transportation)
    • Significant state SB-267 funds and other state dollars. (NFRMPO)

So yes: federal and state taxpayers, plus local governments, helped pay to widen and rebuild this stretch – bridges, interchanges, added capacity, safety features.

Nobody should pretend this corridor sprang fully formed from toll booths.

But that’s not the whole story.

Segment 5: Toll-Backed Loan That Actually Finishes the Job

“Segment 5” – Mead to Berthoud – was the last two-lane bottleneck and was not fully funded until very recently. (northerncoloradoprospers.com)

What changed?

• CDOT now has a $350 million plan to fully fund Segment 5 using:
  • Money from CDOT’s 10-Year Plan, and
  • A federal TIFIA loan that will be repaid from toll revenues from the I-25 North Express Lanes, not from the state’s general fund. (northerncoloradoprospers.com)

CDOT’s own funding page spells it out:

For Segment 5, about $100 million is already identified, and CDOT is reinvesting toll revenue from Segments 6, 7, and 8 to get a loan to pay for the rest, finishing the last two-lane section between Denver and Fort Collins. (Colorado Department of Transportation)

The U.S. Department of Transportation says the $501 million TIFIA loan for the I-25 Express Lanes expansion is backed by toll revenues and lets Colorado accelerate construction by nearly a decade and avoid more than $250 million in delay costs. (Department of Transportation)

So on Segment 5 especially, the picture looks like this:

Taxes and grants help get the project to the starting line.
Tolls are the revenue stream that lets us borrow big and actually build it now.

That is not “100% taxes build it, then they double-charge you.” It is a user-fee model stapled onto a chronically underfunded highway system.

Who (and What) Is CTIO?

CTIO – the Colorado Transportation Investment Office – is the state’s tolling/“innovative finance” shop. It’s a government-owned enterprise created under Colorado law to:

• Impose tolls and other user fees,
• Issue revenue bonds and borrow money backed by those fees,
• Stay an “enterprise” under TABOR by getting less than 10% of its revenue from state/local grants. (Colorado Department of Transportation)

The federal Build America Bureau lists the I-25 Express Lanes loan’s primary revenue pledge as toll revenues. (Department of Transportation)

Translation: CTIO is built to run on tolls and fees, not across-the-board taxes, and to borrow against that stream for projects like I-25 North.

That’s why the express lanes are tied so tightly to toll-backed financing. It’s the one big tool the state can spin up without a statewide tax increase and outside TABOR’s limits.

The Bigger Problem: Denver Loves Fees, Not Lane Miles

Here’s where I absolutely share the commenter’s frustration.

Instead of fixing the core revenue problem and funding road capacity like adults, the Legislature and the Governor have chosen a different strategy:

1. Create new fees.
2. Stand up new “enterprises” with those fees.
3. Put a big chunk of the money into transit, bike/ped projects, air-quality programs, and electrification, not basic highway lanes.

SB21-260: Fees, “Sustainability,” and New Enterprises

In 2021, Governor Polis signed SB21-260, the “Sustainability of the Transportation System” bill. It:

• Raises roughly $5.3–$5.4 billion over 10 years through new fees on gasoline, diesel, EVs, retail deliveries, and rideshare trips. (SWEEP)
• Stacks on new “road usage” and delivery fees without a TABOR vote. (CML)
• Creates or expands multiple state enterprises, including:
  • Community Access Enterprise (EV charging & adoption),
  • Clean Fleet Enterprise (fleet electrification),
  • Clean Transit Enterprise (transit electrification),
  • Nonattainment Area Air Pollution Mitigation Enterprise, plus a beefed-up Bridge & Tunnel enterprise. (Common Sense Institute)

A Common Sense Institute review of these policies found:

• Since 2017, Colorado has created or increased numerous transportation-related fees, but “the statutes authorizing them have directed the bulk of the dollars collected toward environmental mitigation, mass transit, and demand management efforts rather than roads.” (Common Sense Institute)
• Over $200 million in transportation fees now hit Coloradans daily, and “the majority of these fees do not fund roads… Instead, they are directed to environmental mitigation.” (Common Sense Institute)

Looking specifically at SB21-260’s retail delivery fee, CSI calculates that about 59% of those fee dollars in FY 2024 went to the four new enterprises and multimodal programs, not the State Highway Fund. (Common Sense Institute)

Meanwhile, one CSI study found that in 2017 only 5.8% of all CDOT spending went toward expanding the road network; 84% went to maintenance and operations. (Common Sense Institute)

In other words:

Denver keeps inventing new “transportation” fees, then shipping most of that money toward green projects while the mainline highway system limps along.

That’s how you get a political environment where toll lanes are the only new capacity that moves.

Polis’ Vision: Fewer Car Trips, Thousands of Miles of New Bike Lanes

I wish I could say this anti-car bias is just a conspiracy theory.

It’s not. It’s in the official documents.

In November 2024, Governor Polis rolled out Colorado Transportation Vision: 2035. The Governor’s own press release and related coverage say the state’s goals include: (Colorado Governor’s Office)

• Doubling non-auto trips (transit, biking, walking, etc.) from 9.6% to 19.2%.
• Increasing transit service miles from 79 million to 145 million – an 83% increase.
• Building 3,540 miles of new bicycle lanes and separated bike paths – an 81% increase in bike infrastructure statewide.
• Adding 1,345 miles of new sidewalks.
• Making sure over half of new housing is built near transit.

CDOT’s new policy directive and GHG rules layer on top of that:

• The Transportation Commission adopted a goal to reduce per-capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 1% per year, while significantly expanding transit service. (Colorado Department of Transportation)

Those are explicit, written “mode shift” goals: fewer car trips, more transit/bike/walk.

At the same time, analysis of CDOT’s own data shows that while Colorado’s population has grown by about 30% since 2000 and vehicle miles traveled by roughly 25%, “the system’s capacity of lane miles has not materially increased.” (Common Sense Institute)

CDOT still says it manages roughly 23,000 total lane-miles of highway and about 3,000 employees – basically the same numbers they were touting years ago. (Colorado Department of Transportation) In other words, we keep layering on new programs, rules, and plans…but not meaningful lane miles.

So when people say:

“There’s always money for bike lanes, trains, and trails, but never for the roads most Coloradans actually use,”

they’re not imagining it. That is the priority structure they’ve adopted.

Safety and Reality: What Happens If We Don’t Play the Game?

I don’t love any of this. But here’s the brutal reality I have to deal with as a county commissioner:

• On the rebuilt stretches of I-25 North, the added lanes, shoulders, and modern design reduce crashes and improve reliability compared to the old two-lane configuration. CDOT frames the North I-25 work explicitly around safety, mobility, and replacing aging infrastructure. (Colorado Department of Transportation)
• Without the TIFIA loan backed by toll revenues, federal officials say the I-25 Express Lanes expansion would likely have been delayed nearly a decade, with more than $250 million in added delay costs. (Department of Transportation)

CSI and others have pointed out that transportation dollars have been quietly shifted away from highway infrastructure toward environmental mitigation and multimodal projects, and that this trend “dramatically expanded in 2021 with the creation and funding of the four new enterprises.” (Common Sense Institute)

Put those facts together, and the choice isn’t between:

• a nice, clean, fully funded, toll-free I-25, or
• this clunky tolling/enterprise model.

The real-world choice under the current political leadership is:

Option A: Hold out for a no-toll fantasy the Legislature will not fund.
Option B: Use toll-backed loans and the CTIO enterprise model to build the capacity and safety improvements now.

I think the state ought to do its most basic job – build and maintain roads – with clear, voter-approved funding, not a maze of climate-branded enterprises and delivery surcharges.

But between a messy financing structure and a two-lane deathtrap, I’ll pick safer pavement and an optional toll lane every time.

So… Are We “Paying Twice”?

Here’s the honest, no-spin answer:

• Yes, taxpayer dollars absolutely helped build and widen North I-25. Federal grants, state funds like SB-267, and local contributions all played a role in the corridor where the toll lanes live. (NFRMPO)
• No, the long-term bill for Segment 5’s express lanes and the big TIFIA loan is not being dumped on your income tax or property tax bill. Those debts are structured to be repaid from toll revenues, via CTIO’s user-fee enterprise. (Colorado Department of Transportation)

So the commenter’s emotion – “this feels like a scam” – is dead on.

But the actual scam isn’t that we’re secretly funding the toll lanes twice.

The scam is that Colorado’s political leadership refuses to straightforwardly fund highways, then pats itself on the back for “sustainability” and “mode shift” while:

• directing most new transportation fees away from roads and into environmental and multimodal enterprises, (Common Sense Institute)
• publicly setting goals to reduce car travel and double non-auto trips by 2035, (Colorado Governor’s Office)
• and letting lane-mile capacity “not materially increase” even as our population and traffic surge. (Common Sense Institute)

So let me put it the way I see it:

Under this Governor and this Legislature, toll-backed express lanes are basically the only way we’re getting new highway capacity.

If we refuse to use that tool out of principle, the road stays as it is:

• More congestion,
• More wrecks,
• More people not making it home.

I don’t have to like the game to tell you the truth about the scoreboard.

On North I-25, the toll lane isn’t the core grift.
The refusal to fund roads honestly – while chasing a forced “mode shift” away from cars – is.