DENVER | Transportation Thread

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

But transit isn't part of the equation at this point, or that's what it seems like.

Maybe this will change this fall when the transit study kicks off and we hopefully end up with a planning document like Denver Moves that sees some solid transit improvements such as bus lanes, increased line frequency, enhanced lines, etc.

Makes a lot of sense. While commuting on a bike may work for many, the many are still a smaller percentage. While Denver will soon have a suburb to city rail system that many cities can only drool over, it still lacks for good intra-city options. I still like my neighborhood circulater idea.

[seventwenty]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

I assume CU wants to enhance their national/regional/local image. Works for me.

Because it won't look tacky....

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

That's actually what it feels like. All we hear about is bike lanes, bike lanes, bike lanes

I don't deny this is a legitimate problem. But it's certainly not how discussions about bikes happen on this forum. And it wasn't the specific issue we were talking about on the last page. And legitimate though it may be, it does not logically follow that bike lanes are therefore useless.

If anyone out there is incapable of discussing bike lanes except to harp about how useless they are, that's every bit as narrow minded and wrong as it would be to think they're the only solution we need. The fact that some people out there incorrectly think bikes are the only solution we need does not give people who think they're useless carte-blanche to hijack every discussion about bikes with their own equally wrong rhetoric.

So by all means, let's recognize the limitations and problems. Just like we do with cars. Just like we do with transit. But let's not get our 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 in a twist every time the word "bike" is used on this forum.

[seventwenty]

I have the following list:

1. bike

[TakeFive]

I'm right behind you

Credit: Image Envision

[TakeFive]

Cool new BRT video


While I was watching the Broncos last night... /Yawn

I found this excellent piece by Ben Wear in the Austin American-Statesman from August of last year. It's about Austin about Portland. It was cool to me as it gave a very good historical perspective of how Portland got started with transit and how they've gotten to where they are today. For example the Feds paid 83% of the cost of their first light rail line. The intent is to compare and consider the growing transportation dilemma in Austin.

The Cookie Monster in the closet
I also spent some time reading a Yonah Freemark piece on City Lab. Didn't care much for his angle but as often the case the comments were either funny or instructive. There was a give and take about whether investing in rail transit to suburbs in "not dense areas" makes a lick of sense.

I figure that by 2020 when RTD is struggling with low ridership on many of the new Fastracks lines while traffic has only gotten even worse that we could see the cookie batter hitting the fan.

Make CDOT our Overlord
I've got it: When the voters are asked to approve an increased revenue stream for transportation improvements, break the election into the five CDOT districts. Emphasize that new revenue can be used to solicit matching funds from the Federal Gubmint. Should one district pass the increase while another one says pass then CDOT can proceed as each district votes. Who wants to be left behind? The revenue should still be allocated partially to counties and municipalities though.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

Make CDOT our Overlord
I've got it: When the voters are asked to approve an increased revenue stream for transportation improvements, break the election into the five CDOT districts. Emphasize that new revenue can be used to solicit matching funds from the Federal Gubmint. Should one district pass the increase while another one says pass then CDOT can proceed as each district votes. Who wants to be left behind? The revenue should still be allocated partially to counties and municipalities though.

This isn't, umm, legal. CDOT's regions are not separate governing or taxing entities, there is no basis for them to vote separately. (If Denver wants to raise money for schools, we don't get to vote high school boundary by high school boundary, either.) I suppose counties could do it, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of a comprehensive statewide transportation system, when we start work in Dolores County but stop at the San Miguel County line.

Also, that makes no sense. Region 1 is the bulk of the population and will decide the election for the entire state anyways. (My guess is that Region 2 falls 50/50, and the rest are so unpopulated that it wouldn't matter - even if it passed, they couldn't fund anything without transfers from the Front Range. That's just how government and the urban/rural divide works. Mineral County taxes alone didn't pay for Wolf Creek Pass, not by a long stretch.)

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

CDOT's regions are not separate governing or taxing entities

Well, the legislature could make them such. Other states do that, fund and govern transportation in major metropolitan areas differently from in rural / small city areas. Not following DOT district boundaries AFAIK, but following MPO or some other effectively similar boundary.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

This isn't, umm, legal. CDOT's regions are not separate governing or taxing entities, there is no basis for them to vote separately. (If Denver wants to raise money for schools, we don't get to vote high school boundary by high school boundary, either.) I suppose counties could do it, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of a comprehensive statewide transportation system, when we start work in Dolores County but stop at the San Miguel County line.

Also, that makes no sense. Region 1 is the bulk of the population and will decide the election for the entire state anyways. (My guess is that Region 2 falls 50/50, and the rest are so unpopulated that it wouldn't matter - even if it passed, they couldn't fund anything without transfers from the Front Range. That's just how government and the urban/rural divide works. Mineral County taxes alone didn't pay for Wolf Creek Pass, not by a long stretch.)

I wondered if doing it by counties wouldn't be the more legally appropriate set-up. I'd guess that CDOT regions and counties probably are consistent? They may be able to organize the districts by a majority of voters in those counties? Denver metro then would only be voting for their own district, not the whole state.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Well, the legislature could make them such. Other states do that, fund and govern transportation in major metropolitan areas differently from in rural / small city areas. Not following DOT district boundaries AFAIK, but following MPO or some other effectively similar boundary.

Yup, that's how Phoenix has become the city with the best freeways in the country - according to a blog I found last night. That's how Denver voted on Fastracks.

[bunt_q]

Major legislation to enable differential tax rates across the state... to enable us to go to the voters with a fuel tax increase. Ha. Let's toss in a Colorado-funded moon base while we're at it. At least TakeFive can make a compelling case for why a fuel tax increase should go on the ballot. But I'd need to hear a good reason why we'd want to tax differently across the state. Seems to overly complicate an already nearly impossible task.

EDIT: Fastracks was RTD - it's a whole layer of government. You'd have to create something akin to that, either as a district under Title 32, where RTD lives. Or under Title 43, where CDOT lives. But I'd argue the current makeup of the Transportation Commission wouldn't be suitable to administer those differential taxes, so I'd expect we'd have to create localized representation (statutory subcommittees, maybe) to spend that money within the regions. And you'd have separate TABOR calculations then by region - not sure how we'd address that. The state would probably want them as standalone governments, since the total would be TABOR revenue hitting the state... Surmountable... But I just don't see a reason. Years of litigation. I'd have a ball with it.

The truth is, TABOR complicates everything. If you want more money, then you go to the voters of Colorado and ask for it. If you don't think that'll work, well, then you can try and be creative... but that creativity is going to be challenged every time. And carving boundaries around voters you think will vote yes seems like something I'd want to challenge. Want money, just ask.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Major legislation to enable differential tax rates across the state... to enable us to go to the voters with a fuel tax increase. Ha. Let's toss in a Colorado-funded moon base while we're at it. At least TakeFive can make a compelling case for why a fuel tax increase should go on the ballot. But I'd need to hear a good reason why we'd want to tax differently across the state. Seems to overly complicate an already nearly impossible task.

Because voters in the major metropolitan areas want higher taxes for transportation, and the rest of the state doesn't. Simple as that. Maybe that's true about voters in Colorado and maybe it isn't. I don't claim to know. But it has absolutely been true in multiple other states, and it gave their gridlocked legislatures a compromise path that worked.

Yes, it's complicated. It requires some new bureaucracies, and some taxing authority pass-throughs. It took a few years of failed experiments and lawsuits to work out. But it got worked out and it absolutely works. It works when it's no longer acceptable for everyone to throw up their hands and do nothing because change is complicated.

[mr1138]

Considering this forum's love of discussing bicycle advocacy, streetscape design, commuting patterns, and Boulder NIMBYism (to name a few); I'm kind of surprised that nobody so far has posted any thoughts about Boulder's "right-sizing" efforts on Folsom st.

The project may not be in Denver, but it is Metro Denver, and there are a lot of interesting lessons that I think could definitely be applicable to any city having a similar conversation - not only in regards to bike infrastructure, but also to the political battle over re-allocating auto lanes for any purpose.

My own take: While I've long understood Boulder's NIMBY culture and don't-ever-change-anything attitude, I am actually a bit shocked how extreme and vile the backlash has been over this. It is actually drawing even more public attention than the anti-growth ballot initiatives or the upcoming Comprehensive Plan update. Boulder has always struck me as being extremely friendly to pro-bike/anti-car policies. It's interesting to see that this is not necessarily always the case, and that many in town now lump this kind of bicycle advocacy together with "over-development."

[Cirrus]

Well I'm guessing but I see two likely explanations:

1) In the past, most of Boulder's bike infrastructure never got in the way of cars. They put down trails along creeks, widened sidewalks to have extra space for bikes, and built underpasses to keep bikes and cars invisible to each other. Oh sure, there were a few on-street bike lanes, but just like any other city they were mostly in the left-over spaces and out of the way. To actually take away a car lane for bikes wasn't all that common.

2) Most of Boulder's best bike infrastructure is in the older, more urban part of Boulder. But Folsom is in the suburban part of Boulder, its land of strip malls and used car dealerships. So it's a different set of people complaining.

I'm skeptical of the skeptics on this one. The fact that only 1 business is reporting declines most likely means the declines are due to some other factor. Meanwhile, Folsom was never a particularly high-traffic street. It's more on the collector level for cars (as opposed to being a major arterial), and honestly it should be just fine with 3 lanes. Nor is it a major transit corridor. If you want to have a north/south bikeway connecting CU to Boulder's commercial cluster around 28th Street, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want, Folsom is by far the most appropriate place for it to go. The other options are 28th or 30th Streets, which are much bigger and higher-traffic roads, that are further from CU.

[mr1138]

I think you're exactly correct about this, but I guess it still came as a bit of a surprise to me. As somebody who grew up riding on Boulder's greenway system, the first time I had the pleasure of riding in Amsterdam I thought "this would be perfect in Boulder, and could really take the bike network to the next level!" So it has been interesting to see how much resistance there is to even testing such an idea. Even many bike riders don't seem to understand how/why a separated track is superior to a regular old bike lane. And many Boulderites continue to express the sentiment that "we don't need an on-street network, because we already have the greenway paths."

When it really comes down to it, Boulderites seem to simply resist any and all change to their daily lives or habits. They may claim to oppose development for environmental reasons, but I think most just don't want the suburban character of town to ever change. I don't think they're alone in this regard though either, and I would bet that any city that attempts to remove a lane from a busy road - be it for BRT, bus lanes, a streetcar, wider sidewalks, or otherwise - will encounter similar opposition.

Meanwhile, every time I have actually driven on Folsom or attempted to turn on it, I have found that conditions no worse than any other street in Boulder and claims of it being a "gridlocked mess" or "impossible to turn onto" are completely overblown. It feels as though people are now just viewing the average afternoon rush-hour as something new, unprecedented, and (of-course) the fault of this project.

[bunt_q]

Well the fact that the transportation committee recommending the change has outright lied about the level of study that was done in advance of the change hasn't helped. Even the Daily Camera has been writing some pretty critical editorials.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Well the fact that the transportation committee recommending the change has outright lied about the level of study that was done in advance of the change hasn't helped. Even the Daily Camera has been writing some pretty critical editorials.

Your comment finally made me start to look at the subject of the Folsom lane reduction (I initially dismissed the complaints as Boulder being Boulder) and that seems to be a glaring misstatement to claim that one day of traffic data is a sufficient data set upon which to make such a drastic conversion. I can't see the committee claim that this was a sufficient level of analysis and data collection holding up to any serious degree of scrutiny.

[Cirrus]

Lying is bad but this was billed as an experiment in tactical urbanism, the whole point of which is to make changes quickly and see how they go. The whole program is called "Living Laboratory," and under that premise it's not so unreasonable to rely on less data. So Boulder seems more likely guilty of not explaining that program correctly, or perhaps of not understanding it themselves, or perhaps (and this might be most likely) of not understanding how Boulderites would feel about shoot-from-the-hip planning. Hanlon's razor.

I don't think this is quite "Boulder being Boulder." I think it's more along the lines of "Oh right, we have these cumbersome bureaucracies because unless you get people to say 'yes' up front, everyone defaults to 'no'."

Tactical urbanism is great, but I think it works best in bigger or less-engaged cities where the community isn't going to want to haggle for months over every square inch of change. Boulder may just not be right for it.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Lying is bad but this was billed as an experiment in tactical urbanism, the whole point of which is to make changes quickly and see how they go.

No, this was billed as an experiment in tactical urbanism that wouldn't have a major adverse impact on the streets it was being implemented on. It's both disingenuous and foolish to not catalog conditions before the experiement if that's the argument you're making, which is exactly the point the Camera and others have been pointing out. We're not talking about plopping a couch on a half block of on-street parking spaces here. You can't evaluate what you can't measure. They set up a situation where both sides can argue based on complete anecdotal evidence. That's either willful deception or gross negligence. It takes zero time and almost zero money to measure traffic for a few weeks.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

No, this was billed as an experiment in tactical urbanism that wouldn't have a major adverse impact on the streets it was being implemented on. It's both disingenuous and foolish...

I agree. If that's what it was billed as, that qualifies as the "guilty of not understanding it themselves" part of my statement. You don't make a claim like that if you're not going to study it first. I'm OK with not studying everything to death sometimes. But you have to be up front about that.

[bunt_q]

It's sort of a shame too, if there was ever a road diet experiment that could demonstrate something, I'd think it's Folsom in Boulder. But if Boulder can't do it, the argument will be that nobody can (or should). It had no business ever being controversial. I'm surely not willing to experiment in Denver.