Yup, the party’s over for sure.
All those things I blamed on the holidays, and the things I ate because it was the holidays, are back.
And all that hope, and promise and optimism that comes with the new year? Not so much.
Whether it’s because I’m just old now, or cold now, I give in to making irresistible side eye several times a day. OK, pretty much all day. Every day.
My early winter grump has taken to elevate itself, making it easy to ignore my waning list of resolutions and offer you, instead, my list of top grievances, almost all of which involve my car and everyone else’s.
First up, I want to see the dolts who ruined I-70 from I-225 to the Denver Mousetrap suffer. I want to see them tied to the steering wheels of their cars and forced to drive that disaster they’ve designed, endlessly day and night, day after day until they beg for mercy and forgiveness from those who desperately need the only really east-west route on this part of the Front Range.
Succumbing to a Denver whim, which has prompted far more than one metropolitan calamity, the state agreed to carve up the old I-70 “Elevated” near the Coliseum and Purina Factory in an effort to “rejoin” old neighborhoods in the region “divided” by the interstate back in the 1950s.
I’m old and have seen some really stupid stuff in Colorado in my time. I’ve seen RTD bus stops built at the end of parking lot drains so they regularly flood and freeze. I’ve lived through Metro districts that haul in taxes from the entire region for a Denver baseball stadium that was supposed to financially benefit everyone from Parker to Thornton. I’ve listened to Lauren Boebert try to explain U.S. economics.
But among the dumbest things I’ve encountered while living here is the idea that we should bury the interstate under a fake playground in the middle of a wildly urban area, smothered by clouds of car exhaust from herds of cars, to make the neighborhoods of Elyria and Swansea cool.
It didn’t work. Go figure.
What it did is make the madness that was once I-70 into a place where everyone except the 47 million cars that dip and dive through the malevolent maze do all they can to avoid it.
And just when the design itself is enough to make you want to walk everywhere, devious Colorado Department of Transportation Department fiends installed “Express Lanes” on the metro area’s toxic highway. The “expansion” of the interstate destroyed the once-navigable lanes that existed for miles in each direction. Unsatisfied with just making the remodel awful, designers made it catastrophic by creating these “express” lanes that no one understands, drives on or even wants. We want the lane back to take the pressure off the other ruined lanes that make up a highway that seems to have been designed by people who don’t drive on it, or maybe don’t drive at all.
But enough about Colorado’s road to ruin.
Let’s complain about pin-ball obstacle courses going up all over the metro area that are supposed to improve the safety for bike-riders and pedestrians.
You’ve seen these things by now. It looks like someone took an oversized croquet set and installed it into the asphalt at a neighborhood corner. Some of these clever inventions purposely narrow a street for no apparent reason in no apparently sensible place, creating a place where cars play chicken with each other and pedestrians and bikers learn to avoid because they’re dangerous.
I like, and do, to walk anywhere and everywhere I can. And I do ride a bike around these nightmares. They by no means instill a sense of confidence or security when I ride, especially when half of the thick, white or yellow sticks are broken from cars clipping them just trying to get to work or home.
Clearly, bike and pedestrian safety is a growing need. Clearly, sticking it to motorists and the street isn’t working.
OK. Now let’s whine about whoever’s bright idea it was to install LED and Halogen lights in every car but mine. Are millennials night-blind and deaf? Worse than just having to drive anywhere at night with every car ripping at your retinas is the fact that some TikTok turd talked every dolt younger than me into thinking that it’s way cool to drive a pick-up truck, with headlights the same level as my head in my normal-person’s car.
A drive on any two-lane Aurora street at night is like being interrogated by Xcel Energy trolls behind a magnifying glass. If you have the kind of ego issues that drive you to pilot a pick-up truck with nary a scratch or snub in the bed, it only follows that you would want to turn your ride into a retinal probe to make you feel studly.
Clearly, as I write this, still with spots in my eyes, this fad is here to stay and only state lawmakers at this point can try and turn down the glare every one of us has to suffer through.
The problem is, there’s no one left to enforce headlight laws, or any traffic laws. Remember window-tinting limit laws? Yeah, they went the way of $1.50 gas. Remember when you couldn’t speed for fear of getting pulled over? Me neither. Clearly, nobody else in the entire metro area remembers that as well.
I’d like to offer a few more gripes, maybe touching on the weaving laws that seem to be misinterpreted as invitations to weave more on I-25 and I-225 faster and more dangerously.
But I’ve got to get on the road before the other people like me do.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Why don’t you address the disastrous SB217 bill that the legislature passed that drove thousands of police officers out of law enforcement? It is still causing officers to leave and to not make stops. If you really are a journalist, address something important that has to do with all of our safety. Ah, too politically correct and too much of a democrat to do that, huh? So much for the free press protecting us.
Why not write an editorial yourself? If this is that important to you then do something rather than complaining about others not doing it for you. A free press is here to do your bidding. Get involved!
I have written at great depth in the past. Sorry you missed it. To the point, the powers to be make sure that we are only fed what they want us to be fed and make sure we have only the opportunity to make brief comments in places like this. Apparently no one really pays attention to brief editorials or comments. I have brought up some extremely dishonest conduct by APD and even submitted an internal affairs complaint. No response. Unless a real investigator looks at some of the things that are wrong and exposes them in a widely published article, there will be no real examination of issues. The politicians are really not accountable until that happens. One example, since the police department encoded the radio system, the public and the press only know what the department feeds them. Police chiefs are politicians who
massage their images and that of the department with a steady eye on what their bosses think. If the media was really concerned about truth, they would have said to me, show me your evidence. I have spoken before Council and given them proof that they simply ignored and in some cases deny receiving.
If I find a real journalist to expose what I have documented, then you will begin to hear the truth and watch the politicians dance. The whole Venezuelan Gang thing is an example of how the politicians ignore problems until they are exposed. It was common knowledge with the officers long before the problem was exposed. The cops could not say anything. The fact that SB217 has not been exposed is an example of the cowardice and power of those in control. The press talks about the shortage of police officers but will not acknowledge what caused that. There was mention of the large numbers of officers who left in 2021, but no talk about why. That was when SB217 was passed. I have spoken to hundreds of officers, many of whom I worked with. There is no doubt that SB217, along with some wrongful prosecutions of officers, have led to a crippling of law enforcement. Dave Perry complains about the lack of traffic enforcement but will not address why that happened. When I spoke with my liberal brother about some of the issues, he told me I should get involved. I laughed. My whole career was involvement that cost me personally. I spent a career trying to professionalize police conduct with only opposition from my bosses. I spent hundreds of hours working on the defense of Officer Haubert and exposing the videos that the Department kept quiet. Please don’t tell me that I should get involved. Ask why the media, our protectors, don’t ask real questions about subjects that affect our safety.
Someone, please change the record that keeps playing that one note!