More cars on the road means higher carbon emissions, and studies have found that more road actually results in more cars. In an effort to reduce greenhouse gases, Governor Polis passed a bill in 2021 that, in part, tied transportation funding approvals to agencies’ emissions targets. As a result, the Colorado Department of Transportation has indefinitely paused its plans to widen I-25 and focused instead on transportation that doesn’t center around cars.

However, the success of robust public transit depends on land use reform that makes housing more dense, affordable, and available. In the words of Will Toor, the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, “I think where we stand now is that the real frontier is around land use.”

Read the New York Times article here.