I was late to the office today.
It was the City of Denver’s fault.
I live in the Green Mountain area of Lakewood. That’s the region west of Union Boulevard and straddling Ellsworth Avenue (the “zero” street). From there I commute to my office at the Independence Institute at 727 East 16th Avenue.
But not for long, I fear. The City and County of Denver seems determined to force me to quit.
I remember when it was easy to get around Denver. When I first lived here in the 1970s and ’80s, traveling around town could be a delight. When I returned in 2010, after a 25-year absence, it still wasn’t bad, despite the intervening population increase.
But since that time Denver has fallen entirely to the “progressive” wrecking crew. (Visit Portland, Oregon—or, better still, Haiti—to see our future.) Denver is now dominated by devotees of the Holy Church of Smart City, Climate Change, and Bicycle Worship.
That’s the sect that takes communion with lattes and avocado toast.
Let’s make this still more personal. I drive the Sixth Avenue freeway into town. (I once tried commuting by trolley—er, I mean light rail—with laughable results.)
From Sixth Avenue, I used to have several viable options:
* I-25 northbound to Colfax Avenue, then east;
* Santa Fe north to Eleventh Avenue, Fourteenth Avenue, or Colfax, and then east;
* continue on Sixth Avenue to Clarkson Street (or sometimes Logan), then north.
What has happened to each of these options illustrates the havoc the “progressive” crowd causes whenever it gets control of anything.
Colfax chaos
Let’s start with Colfax, because it’s the worst. This famed “longest commercial street in America” bears the name of Schuyler Colfax, who as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, sponsored the amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery. (He later served as Vice President.) But North Capitol Hill’s portion of his namesake boulevard has been strangled.
Multiple automobile through-lanes have been constricted down to one in each direction. The remainder of its valuable real estate is now wasted on (1) turn lanes, which accommodate one or two cars at a time, while the through lanes are burdened by long lines, (2) intermittently-used bus lanes, and (3) almost never-used bike lanes.
The bike lanes are rarely used partly because there aren’t that many cyclists and partly because many of them disregard the bike lanes. They prefer to wander the streets and sometimes sidewalks—running red lights and stop signs, and otherwise disregarding traffic rules.
This portion of Colfax Avenue is now a ragged relic, punctuated by shuttered businesses. The latter are the casualties of the city’s destructive construction and its crime wave. Bus stations with their large metal arches shadow the fronts of surviving businesses, discouraging customer entry. They augur the slums that are to come. (Compare New York City’s experience with elevated trains.)
The Santa Fe circus
Second: Santa Fe north of Sixth Avenue lost one of its through lanes several years ago. But that didn’t cause enough havoc, so the city is doubling down. This important through street has contracted the wasting construction disease that afflicts Colfax. Admittedly, part of that construction is repair. But it’s not just repair, because if it were, it would be over by now.
The part that isn’t just repair is “multi-modal.” That’s progressive-speak for another stupid effort to subordinate cars to buses, bikes, pedestrians, and the zig-zag of the vagrants who populate central Denver.
Fourteenth Avenue used to be a beautiful way of getting from west to east, so the city lane-strangled it, too.
That leaves Eleventh Avenue as the driver’s remaining option from Santa Fe (or from Santa Fe’s detour). As such, it is often congested with drivers trying to move eastward. This morning, as I sat stalled behind a long line of cars waiting to cross Speer Boulevard, I wondered how much pollution all those idling vehicles were spewing. But that will receive no consideration in city hall, because “progressives” oppose pollution only when doing so promotes their own power.
Middle finger to motorists
Third: There is the option, once leaving Sixth-Avenue-the-Freeway, to continue on Sixth-Avenue-the-City-Street. But the intersection at Kalamath and Santa Fe is always jammed, even after rush hour.
True, if I get across Kalamath, Santa Fe, Bannock (a crossing impeded by long lights for no discernable reason), Broadway, and Lincoln, then the remaining seven blocks to Clarkson Street are not too bad. But I’m still not home clear, because Clarkson is sometimes shut down entirely, and when it isn’t, one of its two lanes is almost always closed for part of the distance. As it was today. (Logan isn’t much better.)
And then, when I finally turn on Sixteenth Avenue toward my office, I find myself partially obstructed by long lines of white posts, which the city has stuck upright in the street like a series of middle-fingers toward the hapless motorist.
The upshot is that as a result of a decade of leftist traffic “management,” a commute that used to last 18 minutes has become an iron man triathlon. Which has induced me, and presumably many others, to look for ways to avoid Denver.
That can’t be good for the city’s business climate. But who cares, right? Isn’t Denver better off without a lot of businesses whose owners might vote (yuck!) Republican?
That question was meant to be facetious. But the real one is this: When the hell are Denver and Colorado voters going to get smart and cure our progressive insanity?
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor, is Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Independence Institute. He authored “The Original Constitution” (4th ed., 2025) and is a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s “Heritage Guide to the Constitution.”
