Overview:
Federal Blvd. is one of Denver's most dangerous corridors, and citizens argue that the city should do more to keep people safe.
Seeing an average of 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles each day, Federal Blvd. is one of Denver’s busiest—and most dangerous—central arteries. Since January, four people have died in car accidents along the corridor. Last month, two pedestrians were killed at the intersection of Howard and Federal, where, according to DPD data, crashes have killed five people in the past five years at that intersection alone.
The dangers of the intersection weren’t lost on commuters. Jada Webb, a high schooler who catches the bus at Howard every day to get to school, visibly cringed when she looked across Federal Blvd. “It’s a little scary. Sometimes it’s okay, but most of the time it kind of freaks me out,” she said before running to catch her bus.
In 2024, four people died in car accidents on Federal Blvd., which was down from five in 2023. According to data from 2017, Federal’s crash rate is more than 20 times higher than the average urban street in Colorado.
“The saddest part is, these aren’t just statistics,” said Allen Cowgill, a Sloan’s Lake resident and co-chair of the Denver Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) Advisory Board. “These are real people that had siblings and parents and children that love them very much, and I feel that these crashes were very preventable.”
Federal’s Speed Problem
While a range of factors contribute to the severity of car crashes, including road design and infrastructure, the most significant driver is the vehicle’s speed during impact.
Federal’s speed limit sits at 35 mph and, according to DOTI officials, the city is not considering lowering it until they can evaluate driver compliance with the SPEED program, which aims to reduce traffic fatalities on Federal and Alameda. Since Federal is technically a state highway, this would require cooperation with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT).
Still, Cowgill, who said the DOTI Advisory Board has raised the issue with city officials, was disappointed that this option wasn’t on the table.
“I wish the speed limit was lowered as part of this, but I think the SPEED program is a great, very affordable, high-impact option,” Cowgill said. “I don’t understand why we know that reducing the speed limit can save lives, and we’ve done it on 38th and we’re not doing it on Federal.”
The cloverleaf interchange at Federal and Colfax is something of a perfect storm for accidents—the wider lanes allow drivers to comfortably reach higher speeds, and the on-ramps from Colfax, which open up into their own lanes on Federal, encourage drivers to accelerate since they don’t have to merge into existing traffic. Pedestrian infrastructure is similarly bleak, with low sidewalks hugging both sides of the street and eight-inch medians providing the only refuge for pedestrians crossing the corridor.
Sloan Lake resident Edward Lovato was cautious around the interchange. “I’m very careful. I’ve seen a lot of people get hit,” Lovato, who takes RTD almost every day, said. “More lanes, the more alert a person has to be.”
“The off-ramp from Colfax to Southbound Federal is incredibly dangerous,” says Councilwoman Jamie Torres who is calling for change. “When I’m driving, I rarely see people truly yield … they just kind of push their way through,” Torres said. “When I see families and kids crossing Federal, it just makes me hold my breath a little bit until they make it to the other side because somebody’s bound to not be paying close attention.”
Federal’s high rate of accidents and fatalities prompted the city to launch SPEED last summer. So far, the program has installed additional speed limit and feedback signs, changed traffic signal timing to reward drivers going the speed limit with more green lights, introduced leading pedestrian intervals and initiated a public awareness campaign encouraging drivers to follow the speed limit.
Calling the two-million-dollar program a “quick hit” investment, DOTI Director Amy Ford acknowledged that SPEED “does not solve everything” and is primarily focused on getting drivers on Federal Blvd. to slow down without making major infrastructure changes.
“When we look at our fatalities and our serious injuries across the city, the primary factor in this is careless driving and speed,” Ford said. “The SPEED program as a whole was a series of improvements and changes—what we could do to rapidly deploy to address safety issues.”
To Torres, whose district includes the stretch of Federal between 19th Ave. and Florida Ave., SPEED was a step in the right direction but doesn’t address the root of the issue.
“(SPEED) is doing what we can do when we’re trying to change an environment where we’re not the only decision makers,” Torres said. “The entire stretch of Federal is made for cars and it’s not made for people, and I do worry about how much we can actually do without seeing a major change in behavior from people who travel that corridor. It’s got to be either in how we build the road or in consequences to some of that reckless driving.”
Equity in Infrastructure
Torres argues that consistent infrastructure investment is a matter of equity. “(District 3) is a lower-income part of the population; we are a browner part of the population, and you can’t help but look at Federal Blvd. and acknowledge there’s a different level of investment in our part of North and South Federal Blvd. than there is where there is a wealthier population,” Torres said. “If you give a community half your attention when it comes to a corridor like this, these are the kinds of outcomes I think you see.”
According to a 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), people of color, with the exception of Asian Americans, faced higher rates of pedestrian fatalities in crashes than white Americans. Low-income neighborhoods also saw higher fatality rates than mid- and high-income communities.
The USDOT report stressed the importance of addressing these “historic and ongoing inequalities” in traffic safety planning, something echoed by Cowgill, who, like Torres, saw equity as a priority for Federal’s infrastructure plans.
“We need to invest in road safety projects in our communities of color and places where we’ve seen historic injury accidents as much as we do in other communities in Denver,” Cowgill said. “I would like to think that we take safety as seriously in the Inverted L (formerly redlined neighborhoods that make up the far Northeast and West) portions of Denver as we do elsewhere.”
Ford noted that DOTI had been working on “pockets” of infrastructure improvements along Federal Blvd. and denied that projects on Federal have been “ignored,” saying that DOTI has been “working to build that (equity) in” and has “plans for more” along the corridor.
Infrastructure changes in the works
While infrastructure plans for other parts of Federal Blvd. are still up in the air, there has been some progress around the Colfax interchange.
Last year, CDOT received a $2 million federal grant to conduct a study on effective alternatives to the interchange’s current design. Research is set to begin this fall, with potential design plans still a long way off. Funding hasn’t yet been designated for future construction or design.
Cowgill was stoked about the opportunity to rework the intersection, suggesting alternative uses for the land like affordable housing. He also hoped to see more concrete changes like speed bumps and neckdowns on Federal, citing other cities’ successes in reducing speeding by installing speed bumps on arterial roads. While Cowgill knew the change would be controversial, he called on the City Traffic Engineer’s Office, headed by Emily Gloekner, to take a more direct approach. Gloekner did not respond to requests for comment.
“I don’t think the leadership at the top levels of the Department of Transportation is moving aggressively enough to do things like putting in speed bumps and narrowing the roads,” Cowgill said, adding that while the DOTI Advisory Board hadn’t met with the City Traffic Engineer directly, he was open to having a conversation.
“It couldn’t hurt,” Cowgill said. “I hope that they would approach what I feel is a public health crisis with people dying on our streets with urgency.”
To Cowgill, the allocation of state and city funding and the city’s philosophy towards transit planning were essential to taking meaningful steps to address pedestrian safety.
“At the end of the day, we have to decide as a city, as a state, are we going to prioritize moving cars quickly? Or are we going to prioritize saving lives and preventing serious bodily injuries?” Cowgill said. “You can’t have both on a street like Federal.”
