We’ve spent four chapters documenting the system:
- Part 1: How Colorado got quietly rewired.
- Part 2: The rule that choked our roads.
- Part 3: The advocacy-industrial complex behind it.
- Part 4: How “public comment” became a choreographed performance.
- And, of course, my 2:30 a.m. meltdown Prologue that spurred me to write all this: I Grew Up in the Colorado They Are Trying to Erase.
Today, we end where this story always should have begun.
Not in the Capitol.
Not in a CDOT Zoom room.
Not in Boulder conference halls.
Not in 200-page policy PDFs.
But in the real lives of the people who live with the consequences.
Because none of this – none of it – is theoretical.
These aren’t abstract “policy disagreements.”
These are impacts on daily life: on safety, mobility, cost of living, opportunity, and the future people thought they had here.
Let’s talk about what this looks like for the people of Weld County, the North Front Range, and every Colorado community that doesn’t have the privilege of designing policy from a laptop in Boulder.
1. The Commuter Who Leaves Home in the Dark
He’s not a climate model.
He’s not a checkbox on a GHG spreadsheet.
He’s not a statistic in a transportation plan.
He’s a guy headed to work on I-25 –
one of tens of thousands –
sitting in the same miles of congestion he’s been stuck in for twenty years.
He’s paying more in fees, more in tolls, more in gas, more in taxes –
and getting less mobility than ever.
While the Transportation Commission debates “mode shift,” he’s shifting through traffic at 12 mph.
While transit activists say “Just ride the bus,” he’s thinking, “Sure – after you run a bus route to my jobsite.”
He’s the human cost.
2. The Family That Can’t Afford to Stay
Colorado used to be the place you could start a life.
Now it’s becoming the place you can’t afford to stay –
even after a lifetime of working, building, raising kids, and serving your community.
It’s no accident.
When transportation funding gets diverted into transit-first projects, when infrastructure lags population, when regulations pile onto development, when road capacity stagnates while demand explodes – costs rise.
And families get priced out.
My own son had to leave this state to start his life.
Now I’m not sure I can afford to finish mine here.
That is the human cost.
3. The Rancher Whose Voice Doesn’t Count
He works sunup to sundown.
He keeps food moving.
He pays his taxes.
He maintains the land everyone else likes to photograph for Instagram and call “open space” and “view sheds.”
But when it comes time for public comment?
He’s not on the Zoom at 1 p.m.
He can’t be.
The people who show up don’t look like him, work like him, or think like him –
but those voices get logged as “public support.”
When agencies cite those comments as justification for policies that harm rural roads, freight routes, and local authority, his silence isn’t neutrality.
It’s exclusion.
He is the human cost.
4. The Small Towns Cut Out of the Future
Weld County has:
- the land,
- the energy base,
- the ag backbone,
- the labor force,
- the universities,
- the growth capacity, and
- the opportunity
to be one of the most promising regions in the entire state.
But when the state funnels billions into transit-heavy, urban-core projects while tying road expansion to climate scoring, places like:
- Greeley
- Windsor
- Firestone
- Frederick
- Severance
- Eaton
- Johnstown
- Milliken
- Kersey
- Platteville
get left holding the bill while being told to “reduce VMT.”
That’s not planning.
That’s punishment.
These communities are the human cost.
5. The People Who Still Believe Colorado Can Be Better
This part is for you.
You love this place.
You’ve served it your whole life.
And now you’re fighting exhaustion, grief, anger, and heartbreak because you can see what’s happening before most others do.
You’re not the human cost.
You’re the human warning signal.
And a warning is a gift – if people listen.
Where This Series Lands
After five parts, here’s the truth:
Colorado is not broken.
It is being run – by a small network of climate-first policymakers, appointees, and advocacy groups who shape infrastructure, land use, transportation, and energy around goals that do not reflect the daily lived reality of most Coloradans.
But the people who live with the consequences are starting to feel it.
And feeling becomes noticing.
And noticing becomes questioning.
And questioning becomes momentum.
This series isn’t about blame.
It’s about clarity.
Because you cannot fix what you cannot see –
and now, finally, I hope you can see it.
The road ahead belongs to those who actually drive it.
📚 BIBLIOGRAPHY – PART 5: THE HUMAN COST
📚 About These Sources
Part 5 is about the impacts, but the impacts come directly from the same machinery documented in Parts 1–4.
The bibliography below connects the human cost to the documented system that produced it – the laws, rules, appointments, comment processes, and policy designs that shape transportation, energy, and local authority.
These links show the structural decisions that create the daily lived experience described in Part 5.
📚 Sources Used in Part 5
GHG Transportation Planning Standard (root of highway constraints)
CDOT GHG rule page:
https://www.codot.gov/programs/environmental/greenhousegas
GHG Planning Standard slide deck (noting majority supportive comments):
https://www.codot.gov/programs/environmental/greenhousegas/assets/ghg-planning-standard-presentation.pdf
Colorado Carbon Reduction Strategy:
https://www.codot.gov/programs/environmental/greenhousegas/assets/colorado-carbon-reduction-strategy-repaired.pdf
Advocacy Mobilization (impacting public voice)
SWEEP Action Alert organizing GHG rule support:
https://www.swenergy.org/colorado-ghg-transportation-planning-standard-action-alert
Colorado Energy Office funding opportunity (local climate policy):
https://governorsoffice.colorado.gov/governor/news/energy-office-announces-launch-funding-opportunity-support-local-policy-adoption-advance
Key Appointments Shaping Policy (who directs the system)
Transportation Commission – Elise Jones bio:
https://www.codot.gov/about/transportation-commission/commissioners/elise-jones
SWEEP staff page – Elise Jones:
https://www.swenergy.org/staff/
Colorado Energy Office – Will Toor bio:
https://www.autosinnovate.org/events/speakers/will-toor
GHG Roadmaps (context for statewide climate mandates)
Colorado GHG Roadmap 2021:
https://spl.cde.state.co.us/artemis/govmonos/gov112g832021internet/
GHG Roadmap 2.0 – Governor’s Office summary:
https://governorsoffice.colorado.gov/governor/news/what-theyre-saying-greenhouse-gas-pollution-reduction-roadmap-20
Wife & I were born and raised in California in 2017 we had to leave as it became too expensive and it became an existence not a life. So at 73 & 72 years old respectively we came to Kersey bought a house for $175,000 close to our daughter & husband who had a 7 acre place outside of town. They moved to Tennessee 3 years later for a better job away from crumbling Colorado. We became interested in attending town board meetings but became disenchanted with their Marxist attitudes and unresponsive to towns people’s wants and needs. But we got a narrowed First St with so-called pedestrian safety bump-outs that require right turns from side streets to cross into oncoming traffic to clear the curbing and then there’s the big rig and farm equipment that goes through town needing extra lane width to accommodate their sizes, makes it fun to avoid collisions. Also ignored was fire department complaints of the now difficult turns and maneuvers now required of them. The board was also uninterested in the lost parking for businesses on Hill & Main Streets. Sidewalk widening became a big priority in their latest escapade to drive people, business and transportation out of Kersey again losing parking spaces in center of town and businesses suffering. We know of business owners wanting to open a store in town but due to the owner of these buildings has never brought them up to code and suspect the condition of some buildings may be beyond help, point being one can not open a store because of no sewer or utilities are available so business is stifled although the board likes to say how committed they are to bring businesses to Kersey. The town has also annexed strips of land along HWY 34, CR53 & CR49 north & south with residents unable to be represented just taxed. As with Greeley and their ruination of 16th ST above 8th Ave the street has become a nightmare for business and vehicles and has already forced a business to close and others to just hang on. These things are not improvements they are the actual results of the Left’s 2030 Agenda. All this and more is not freedom it is control and mandates of Marxism that is widespread across the whole of Colorado. Is it time for us to move again as the state is on the edge of a cliff with one foot over the edge into oblivion, one has to wonder if there is any hope of regaining the rights & freedoms now lost here especially as Gov Polis has sent a senior woman to his Stalinist prison for not giving-up the proof she has of the widespread voter fraud that has placed these Marxist into office, I know surprising isn’t it, NOT!