If you’re among the 32,000 or so drivers who travel on Broadway south of downtown Denver each day, you still may be sore about the six-block bottleneck that since last summer has squeezed four lanes of rush-hour traffic into three.
The situation was caused by the installation of a pilot two-way bike lane along the left curb of the one-way southbound street between Bayaud and Virginia avenues. The city made room for the bikeway and provided a buffer for cyclists by shifting the parking lane into one of five traffic lanes, one of which already was reserved for buses and right turns during afternoon rush hour.
All of this at a time of day that Broadway funnels the heaviest traffic out of downtown. And as frustrating as that has been for some drivers — while being hailed by bike advocates — that change is a signal of the future of commuting in Denver.
As the city grapples with a surging population, intensifying traffic at all hours of the day and high demand for driving alternatives, public works officials increasingly are dividing up precious pavement, ending the decades of supremacy enjoyed by cars.
“Sure, there will be some grumbling from people who live in the south suburbs” and take Broadway home from work, said Ken Schroeppel, an assistant professor in urban planning at the University of Colorado Denver.
But he and transportation planners say making Broadway more accessible to cyclists and transit is a way to increase its travel capacity.
Schroeppel also noted that large numbers of the poor, the elderly, young people and those with impairments don’t drive. They could use better, more reliable alternatives to get around.
“Our priority is not necessarily to accommodate auto-driving suburbanites,” he said. “Our priority is serving the whole public: people who walk, people who take transit, people who bike — as well as people who drive.”
It might seem to some like commuters are on the losing end of a zero-sum game.
But perception can distort reality on that Broadway stretch. Perhaps surprisingly, as a city study of Broadway found, there was little noticeable change in travel time for cars in the first few months of the Broadway bike lane pilot, even as three lanes did the work of four. Before the installation, it took an average of 11 minutes and 50 seconds to drive the 2.5-mile stretch from Colfax Avenue downtown to Interstate 25. After, the same distance took an average of 11 minutes and 59 seconds.
While rush hour brings more variability, city officials say the Broadway pilot shows that traffic largely adapted.
That has bolstered plans both to activate the transit lane 24/7 this summer and, in the next year or two, to expand the bikeway north to Speer Boulevard, where it would connect with the Cherry Creek bike path. Eventually, the bikeway could reach downtown.
In the process, such redesigns could make the streets in Denver’s walkable neighborhoods safer, including in Baker and Washington Park West along south Broadway.
“Frankly, it would help the pedestrian user,” said Lucia Brown, a Baker neighborhood advocate who wants to see the bikeway extended. “So instead of crossing a five-lane freeway, you’re crossing a three-lane street.”
More bike lanes and other street remodels
Denver has been redesigning its streets across the city in recent years, especially in more densely populated areas.
Among the additions are a bevy of new bike lanes, including variations that separate bikes from car traffic downtown, to different degrees, on 15th Street and on Arapahoe and Lawrence streets. Denver Public Works also has reduced traffic lanes to make space for bikes along neighborhood thoroughfares such as Highland’s 15th Street/West 29th Avenue corridor.
Denver’s flashiest road remodel is underway on Brighton Boulevard northeast of downtown. Along the backbone of the River North Art District, the $41 million project will retain two traffic lanes in each direction, while making use of easements and self-imposed taxes contributed by property owners to add sidewalks, protected bike lanes, new pedestrian crossings and streetscape enhancements.
Transportation planners also have been studying potential transit lanes and bike improvements along the busy Speer/Leetsdale Drive corridor.
There is an as-yet-unfunded $125 million-plus plan for East Colfax Avenue to roll out a bus rapid transit line all the way to Aurora, using dedicated rush-hour lanes.
In short, Broadway is one of many commuter corridors undergoing transition.
“There are a couple ways to look at it,” said Crissy Fanganello, Denver’s director of transportation. “What we’re trying to think about is from the person-trip capacity — so how many people can we move? For several decades, we’ve been thinking about it in terms of ‘How many vehicles can we move?’ ”
But Broadway may have the most potential to inspire commuter backlash.
Asked about the conflicts between neighborhood interests and maintaining a car-friendly route out of the city, Denver City Councilman Jolon Clark, who represents south Broadway neighborhoods, put it this way: “If we do nothing, it’s going to get clogged out to the point that nobody can use it. If we do something, we may cause a different clog-out date for cars. But we’ve now created options — versus just being clogged-out and having no options.”
Broadway bike lane gets little use — so far
Clark and neighborhood leaders say they are eager for the bike-lane extension. Then more cyclists might actually use it.
In September and October, the pilot’s first two months, city counts showed that five or six dozen cyclists a day used the six-block bikeway in either direction.
The bikeway didn’t really go anywhere — making the pilot more about gauging how well Broadway’s traffic adapted to the change. A direct connection to the Cherry Creek path — the next segment planned — probably will boost bike commuter use significantly, Clark and transportation planners say.
Public Works is spending $800,000 to design Broadway’s bike-lane extension, pedestrian improvements and transit-lane changes.
But when the city will be able to extend the bike lane, using permanent concrete instead of the pilot’s temporary painted lines, could depend on how much of a $22 million plan ends up on the project list for this year’s citywide bond ballot measures, which could reach $900 million. That plan would cover the next phase as well as a future one that extends the bikeway all the way from I-25 to Colfax.
The next bike-lane extension may take a year or two, but Public Works plans the full-day transit-lane conversion this summer. That will happen along Broadway and along a shorter segment of one-way northbound Lincoln Avenue, from Fifth Avenue to Colfax, using red pavement markings to distinguish the lane.
The city will study the impact for a year.
“I think that’s even bigger than the bike lane,” said Mathew Wasserburger, president of the Baker Historic Neighborhood Association. His eventual hope is for a frequent circulator bus between downtown and the I-25/Broadway light-rail station.
To see the potential, look to Colfax. Some blocks near downtown carry up to 40,000 cars a day, while East Colfax also is the city’s busiest corridor for transit, carrying 22,000 bus riders daily.
For now, a Regional Transportation District spokesman says RTD is planning to watch how the full-time Broadway and Lincoln transit lanes affect bus travel times — and whether they make more frequent service feasible.
In a way, the changes in store for Broadway are a return to the past.
For decades, south Broadway hosted one of Denver’s well-used streetcar lines, ending in Englewood. It was one of the last routes to cease service in 1950, as automobiles took over and city dwellers flocked to the new suburbs.
But now, rapidly growing Denver is making up ground on the density it lost.
“We’re reaching a point now where we simply can’t squeeze more cars onto our streets, and we’re not going to widen the streets through our neighborhoods,” Schroeppel said. “Something’s gotta give.”
