For a city whose metro area has grown by nearly 500,000 people in the last 10 years, Denverites should be seeing new bike pathways, better sidewalk infrastructure and improved public transit systems, but according to advocates that’s not happening fast enough. They are calling for more improvements in pedestrian and cycling safety.
In this month’s episode of the Bucket List Community News podcast, our Ryland Scholes discusses Denver’s pedestrian and cycling safety issues with two advocates: David Chen from the Denver Bicycle Lobby and Alejandra Castañeda from Pedestrian Dignity. As experts on traffic safety in the Mile High City, Chen and Castañeda provided valuable context on Denver’s problems and how we can solve them.
When asked about the city’s pedestrian safety issues, Chen was straightforward.
“It’s bad,” he said. “We had 80-something deaths last year from traffic violence. The majority of these deaths and the serious bodily injuries that city officials track are occurring on a select few high-traffic streets that they term the ‘high-injury network.’ These include Federal, Colfax and Alameda.”
Some progress is being made, like the city’s new $150 sidewalk repair fee and the proposed bike lane along W. 29th Ave., but many problems remain. According to reports from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), Denver’s bike infrastructure is inadequate to protect riders, as evidenced by the 133 deaths by 2023.
Chen and Castañeda attribute this to the high injury rates on Denver’s streets. West 29th Ave. in Sloans Lake is part of that high injury network, where a higher than usual number of biker injuries and deaths were reported. To address this, Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) proposed removing some street parking to add a bike lane to help improve biker safety in the area. Unfortunately, plans hit a speedbump when key local businesses voiced their opposition to the bike lane.
“The sort of snag that we encountered was that a couple of businesses along that stretch have been using the curb space for parking, but also for food deliveries and loading zones,” Chen said. “They put up a big stink with the city and said that they needed to have these parking spaces.”
The city and business owners eventually allowed the protected bike space to be built, but a few blocks will keep street parking and a traditional painted bike lane. In areas with painted bike lanes, there will be little to no separation between bicycles and cars on the road, resetting the problem. While Chen and Castañeda are pleased with the new bike lane, they also believe that retaining the unsafe street parking area makes things bittersweet.
“It’s progress forward,” Chen said. “But it’s two steps forward, one step back.
Along with ensuring the safety of Denver’s bikers and pedestrians, Chen and Castañeda have a secondary goal: to make Denver more friendly for those who wish to reduce their car use or get rid of it altogether but it’s not easy.
“[The city] has identified that there’s a silent majority of people that they call ‘curious but concerned’ who would opt to not drive,” Chen said. “The majority of car trips are actually under three miles, which is the perfect distance for a bike… If most of your trips are three miles, using a personal automobile is a pretty inefficient way of conducting business.”
Castañeda decided to get rid of her car years ago after it was totaled in an accident, initially as a way to cut costs. Since then, not only has Castañeda saved money, but she’s avoided the stresses that come with navigating the increasingly worse Denver traffic.
“By forcing myself not to have a car, you save money, and you save your mental health a lot,” Castañeda said. “Driving is not fun in a city.”
After giving up her car, Castañeda started taking the RTD buses across the city more frequently. Along with saving money on gas and service charges, she found that taking the bus allows her to better connect with the people she works so hard to advocate for.
“When you take the bus, you connect with your community in a way that you cannot connect in other ways,” Castañeda said. “You are exposed to what a lot of other people have to go through to move about in the city.”
But many Denverites are reluctant to use public transportation. They claim the Regional Transportation District (RTD) remains slow, unreliable and sometimes unsafe. RTD ridership is down 46% from its 2019 figures, according to a study by the Common Sense Institute. The city is working on solutions to RTD’s problems, including adding more Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lanes downtown and in key corridors.
Challenges aside, Chen and Castañeda believe that benefits outweigh the drawbacks of living a car-free or car-lite life.
“It’s a totally different paradigm of living your life,” Chen said. “You’re more engaged with your community. You’re more aware of your surroundings. You’re getting your exercise in. Yeah, it definitely is worth it in my opinion.”
As Denver becomes more crowded, Chen and Castañeda believe the city needs to be focused on finding a solution that allows cars, bikes and pedestrians to safely coexist on the roads.
“If you do have this mode shift, that actually benefits drivers because there are fewer cars on the road,” Chen said. “The fact of the matter is that Denver cannot build enough road space to accommodate the population growth that we are projecting. We need to have some sort of solution that accommodates this reality, and multi-modal options have to be part of that equation.”
For anyone looking to get involved with helping make Denver’s streets safer for bikers, you can find more information about the Denver Bicycle Lobby here. Listeners curious about Castañeda’s work to improve Denver pedestrian safety in walkways can be found here.
