After an extensive study of options for improving travel on Colfax Avenue from Aurora all the way to the Auraria campus, the city of Denver has recommended bus rapid transit (BRT) for the corridor. This is a smart, visionary and fiscally responsible plan that makes good sense for the residents of Aurora and of Denver. BRT on Colfax will improve transportation, and bring more vitality and economic development.
The idea is that, during rush hour, one travel lane in each direction would be dedicated to buses. This would be accompanied by many improvements: buses with low floors and multiple entrance doors to speed boarding, improved bus stops, better street crossings, real-time bus arrival information and better bike and pedestrian connections.
Some people have criticized the recommendation, for a couple of reasons. One set of critics believes that BRT is not good enough, and Colfax would be better served with a streetcar instead. Others are worried about giving up a car lane during rush hour — for either BRT or streetcar — because they worry that this will make traffic worse for cars. We believe that both concerns are misguided.
With BRT, you get a bus service that acts like a train — fast, convenient, and attractive — at a fraction of the cost. The study took a close look at a streetcar alternative. What they found was that it gives basically the same service as BRT, but costs four times as much.
Because the travel time and frequency, and the travel experience, are pretty much the same, projected ridership on BRT and streetcar are almost identical. But the BRT can be built for $115 million, while the streetcar would take $400 million, and on an annual basis it would cost almost double as much to operate.
It simply does not make sense to pay this much more to get essentially the same service. And, in the real world we live in, with limited transportation funding available, insisting on streetcar would likely mean no improvements for many years into the future.
Whether you build BRT or a streetcar, you do have to dedicate lanes to transit, at least during rush hour; otherwise, the buses or streetcars would just sit in congestion, and not many people would ride them.
It is true that this will make cars go a little bit slower. But the added delay is much smaller than the travel time savings for the bus riders. The traffic analysis projects that auto travel time will go up four minutes, while buses will save 11 minutes. And since the study projects that more than half of travelers on Colfax (57 percent) will be bus riders, the benefits will far exceed the impacts.
Denver is taking a smart approach — focusing on how to move people, not just cars.
Part of the reason that car speeds don’t decline much is because fewer people drive when good transit is available. The traffic study predicts that when you add BRT to the street, bus ridership almost doubles – 17,000 more people a day choose to ride transit, while the number of drivers declines by 7,000 trips per day. This makes sense: When you provide a fast, convenient transit service in a denser urban area, people use it.
And, because BRT not only improves access along Colfax, but also adds street level amenities and makes for a friendlier pedestrian environment, it will attract investment to the corridor. The study estimates that property values along the corridor will increase by up to $346 million due to the addition of BRT.
As the metro area grows, and as demographic changes continue to push down how much people drive, BRT is the most affordable way to expand high quality public transit at the scale that we need. It is time to embrace BRT on Colfax.
Will Toor is director of transportation programs for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project.
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