Gunnison County is home to a diverse network of roads and bridges that allow the public to access the vast opportunities the County provides. This road network includes about 418 miles of pavement, gravel, and dirt County roads and hundreds of miles of other public roads. Currently, only 30 percent of the County roads are paved; the remaining 70 percent of roads in the network are gravel or dirt. Gunnison County Road and Bridge is responsible for maintenance of roads within the County jurisdiction, along with road improvements to existing roads and new surface transportation infrastructure. Throughout the transportation network, the County is also responsible for 48 bridges and major culverts along County owned roads. The primary source of funding for Road and Bridge has been the Highway User Tax Fund (HUTF), a source of money accumulated by gas taxes; this tax base has not increased since 1993.

Since the late 1990’s, Gunnison County Road and Bridge department has had a constrained budget, while costs of materials and labor have continued to increase. Safety regulations and requirements for surface transportation are also ever changing, resulting in additional expenses meeting both state and federal requirements. With funding sources remaining stagnant, the department has had to adjust the maintenance of the roads from the “best” treatment, to the one that can be afforded on the constrained budget. The current state of Gunnison County roads reflects the hard choices that the department has had to make over the last 25+ years, where ride comfort and improvements have taken a backseat to simply keeping the roads open and maintaining safety. These hard choices have resulted in over 38 million dollars in deferred maintenance to the County road network, which does not account for year-over-year inflation.

Gunnison County recently completed a thorough pavement conditions assessment of paved and gravel roads within the jurisdiction to gain an understanding of existing conditions and future surface transportation needs. This assessment also helped the County to identify budgetary needs to catch up on deferred maintenance and to continue to maintain and improve roads within Gunnison County, projecting out to the year 2045.

With $38 million in deferred maintenance costs, it is estimated that Gunnison County will need to budget and additional $1.9 million each year to meet the demands and provide high quality roads and maintenance services to the community.