If you live, work, or drive in northern Colorado, you don’t need a consultant’s report to tell you I-25 is our lifeline. You feel it every time you white-knuckle through a bottleneck, crawl past a crash, or wonder if you’ll make it to work – or back home – on time.
For Weld County, and for our neighbors from Thornton to Fort Collins, North I-25 isn’t just another highway. It’s Main Street for a region that has been one of the fastest-growing in Colorado for more than a decade. Weld County’s population alone has grown by more than 30% since 2010 and is rapidly approaching 380,000 residents. (Weld County) Jobs and freight have followed that growth. This corridor is a designated national freight route, carrying tens of thousands of vehicles every day, including a significant share of trucks that keep our stores stocked and our employers in business. (City of Fort Collins)
CDOT has not been asleep at the wheel. In recent years, the state has invested heavily in the I-25 North Express Lanes Project – adding capacity, replacing aging bridges, and improving interchanges. As those projects have come online, crash rates on rebuilt segments have dropped significantly, proving what common sense already tells us: modern design, extra capacity, and less stop-and-go traffic save lives. (Weld County)
But anyone who drives the corridor knows the job isn’t finished.
Today, some stretches of North I-25 (Segments 6, 7, and 8) feature an improved vision: two general-purpose lanes plus a managed express lane in each direction. Segment 5 (CO 66 to CO 56) is currently under construction and will soon reflect that 2+1 configuration. Other stretches – specifically Segment 4 (CO 7 to CO 66) and Segment 3B (CO 7 to E-470) – are still stuck in the past. Those gaps create daily bottlenecks. They also create safety problems when fast, modern segments dump into narrower, older pavement that simply wasn’t built for today’s traffic volumes.
That unfinished business has real consequences. Every crash on I-25 is not just a statistic; it’s a call to local law enforcement, fire, and EMS, often tying up resources for hours and closing lanes that thousands of commuters and truckers depend on.
There’s another piece of this story that hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention: CDOT has already spent tens of millions of dollars building three brand-new mobility hubs along North I-25 – at Firestone-Longmont (CO 119), at Berthoud (CO 56), and at Centerra in Loveland. (Colorado Department of Transportation) These hubs were designed from the ground up to support Bustang and regional bus service, with center-loading platforms in the median that let buses slip out of the express lane, pick up passengers, and get back on the road without weaving through ramps and traffic. That design can save riders up to 10 minutes per stop and make transit a truly competitive option. (Colorado Department of Transportation)
But here’s the catch: those hubs only realize their full potential if there is a continuous managed lane for Bustang to use.
If the express lane disappears in Segments 4 and 3B, Bustang is forced back into the same congested general-purpose lanes as everyone else. Travel times become unpredictable. Commuters can’t trust the schedule. And the “reliable alternative” voters were promised turns into just another bus stuck in traffic. That’s not fair to the riders, and it’s not a smart way to treat a major state investment.
On the finance side, the story is equally clear. Colorado has already secured a $501 million federal TIFIA loan backed by toll revenues from the I-25 North Express Lanes.(Department of Transportation) Bond rating agencies have recently affirmed and upgraded those bonds, specifically citing the strength of the corridor’s revenue and traffic profile. (KBRA) In plain English: the market believes North I-25 works as a toll facility and will continue to grow.
Completing Segments 4 and 3B as managed lanes isn’t just about adding pavement. It’s about protecting that revenue stream so CTIO can pay down debt, reinvest in the corridor, and free up scarce tax dollars for parts of Colorado that don’t have this kind of tolling potential. It’s capacity expansion that largely pays its own way.
So where does that leave us?
It’s time for the Colorado Transportation Commission and CDOT to do three things:
- Formally commit to finishing Segment 4 and Segment 3B as managed lanes, creating a continuous express-lane trip from downtown Denver to Fort Collins.
- Align the 10-Year Plan and funding strategy so these segments move from “vision” to “construction,” leveraging the proven toll strength of the corridor.
- Recognize that safety, freight movement, and Bustang reliability all depend on finishing the job, not on accepting permanent bottlenecks in the middle of our fastest-growing region.
Northern Colorado has done its part – local governments have put money on the table, businesses have adapted through years of construction, and commuters have been patient. Now we’re asking the state to finish what it started.
North I-25 is too important to leave half done. Let’s close the gaps, complete Segments 4 and 3B, and deliver the safe, reliable, multimodal corridor northern Colorado was promised.
Scott James is a Weld County Commissioner, Chair of the North I-25 Coalition, and a Council member on the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization.
