As cities across the country experiment with protected bike lanes on busy downtown streets, Denver prepares to launch its own pilot program with a two-way bike lane on South Broadway in downtown Denver.
The project will run six blocks, from Bayaud Avenue to Virginia Avenue, and will include the busy intersection at Broadway and Alameda Avenue.
Starting Monday, city workers will put out orange cones, traffic signs and bicycle signals.
The signs will direct cyclists from the bikeway to nearby destinations such as the Alameda Light Rail station, the Cherry Creek Trail and Washington Park.
The bikeway will open Aug. 15 with the goal of remaining in place through November 2017 to collect extensive data on everything from safety to traffic volume and the number of bicyclists using the bikeway. There will be an evaluation of the bikeway in three months.
The temporary redesign of Broadway is a key part of a larger project looking at new ways to move people safely along the high-traffic Broadway/Lincoln corridor at a time when so many new people are moving to Denver and most of them drive cars. Between 2006 and 2014, an average of 40 people moved to Denver each day, according to Denver Public Works.
“We expect to gain valuable information on how to organize Denver streets amid ever-increasing population growth,” said Nancy Kuhn , spokeswoman for Denver Public Works.
“Right now we have pedestrians, people on bikes, drivers and transit riders all using Broadway, and our goal is to provide them all with safe places to travel and reach their destinations.”
The popular Baker neighborhood is home to trendy restaurants, shops, and a music scene that’s hosting the Underground Music Showcase this weekend on South Broadway.
People often ride their bikes on sidewalks because they don’t feel safe riding in the heavy traffic on South Broadway. This is illegal in Denver unless the cyclist is within one block of parking the bike and traveling 6 mph or slower.
“I think this redesign is past due,” said David Sachs , editor of Streetsblog Denver, part of a national network that supports smart growth and livable cities.
Sachs, who attended all the public meetings about the bikeway, believes the goal is to improve the street for everyone, not just bicyclists.
“It’s important to remember this is part of Mayor Hancock’s goals for the city,” said Sachs, recalling how the mayor last year held an official ribbon-cutting on the city’s first parking protected bike lanes.
Planning for the project started last September with a pop-up bike lane on South Broadway that converted a parking lane to a bike route. But business owners didn’t like losing convenient customer parking, so the city turned to a new design.
The two-way protected bikeway will be located in the far left lane of South Broadway, protected by a lane of parking flanked by three vehicle travel lanes. A fourth vehicle travel lane will continue to be dedicated to buses during peak hours.
The bike lane will have pavement markings, short vertical poles called bollards and dedicated bike signals at intersections.
Research conducted for the Broadway/Lincoln study analyzed how many cars each lane could handle per hour during rush hours — morning for Lincoln, afternoon for Broadway. Planners found that Lincoln’s four lanes moved about 1,000 more cars than Broadway’s five, so they believe that Broadway can operate at its current capacity despite giving up a car lane for bike travel.
“We’re pretty pumped to see the city is taking a big public stand for bikes,” said Carina Gaz , spokeswoman for Bike Denver, which collaborated with the city on the study.
People in the neighborhood are taking a wait-and-see attitude.
Virgil Dickerson, marketing manager for Illegal Pete’s, lives and works in the area.
“As an avid bike rider, I want to see as many bike lanes as possible, but the challenge on Broadway is there’s already so much traffic that taking out a lane seems problematic to me, but apparently they did some studies,” he said.
When the city occasionally closes a lane for construction in that area, he said, it can cause “a lot of extra traffic.”
But he’s optimistic the bike lane can be a success.
“Working for a (local) business, I’m excited to see how it works,” he said. “We’re pro-bikers, and our Broadway store has a huge bike rack to park bikes. Any city that’s bike-friendly is a good city in my book.”
