This is a banner year for the Denver metro transit system, with the opening of four rail lines serving places from Wheat Ridge to the airport and the Flatiron Flyer rapid bus route to Boulder.
But don’t call Denver a transit-rich city — not yet. Beyond the shiny trains that ferry suburban commuters to downtown and Tech Center jobs, and sports fans to games, the core city itself still struggles with transit gaps.
Largely rooted in a bus network that is spread too thin, those shortcomings make travel between some of Denver’s most urban neighborhoods, job centers, recreation spots and nightlife districts cumbersome or downright unmanageable. Closer to the city limits, especially in east Denver neighborhoods that are miles from new and upcoming rail lines, transit access flickers.
Transit advocates point to Cherry Creek, home to high-paying desk jobs and even more lower-paying restaurant, hotel and retail jobs, as a big missed opportunity for a transit hub. Instead, it’s an area where several bus routes simply pass through. Many of those employees live in northeast Denver, notes Stuart Anderson of the nonprofit group Transportation Solutions.
“If you look at transit from there to the shopping center, it’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’ve got to take the 15 (on Colfax Avenue) to the 40, and then you’re stuck on Colorado Boulevard, and you’ve still got to get to Cherry Creek. It just isn’t served very well.”
Connections between Cherry Creek and downtown’s Union Station, where most of the rail lines go, similarly frustrate potential riders, despite years of pushing from Cherry Creek business leaders for a direct downtown shuttle.
Several riders who contacted The Denver Post for this story also cited myriad transit frustrations extending to most parts of the city: the need for more frequent service; lower fares; more routes designed on a grid instead of being geared to feed into downtown or rail lines; and circulator buses connecting common destinations in neighborhoods.
But public transportation advocates and riders see promise in recent moves by Denver city officials to take the reins — or at least share the wheel with the Regional Transportation District — when it comes to the city’s transit destiny, even if the question of how to pay for more expansions remains unanswered.
This summer, city officials kicked off a community effort to create the first citywide transit plan, which officials say will draw on traditional and innovative ideas. That follows on groundwork Denver has laid for its first project: the potential transformation of Colfax Avenue by 2022 into a bus rapid transit corridor, with more frequent and faster streetcarlike service in dedicated lanes during rush hour and fewer set stops.
Technological advances also give hope to some that Denver can improve transit access within the city. In some U.S. cities, especially those with cash-strapped transit agencies, partnerships with private companies are testing out dynamic routing. That technology relies on computer algorithms to build customized routes for smaller buses or vans based on where passengers need to go.
Such progress has been a long time coming, both for those who depend on transit to get around the city and a potential legion of would-be riders who want to ditch their cars more often. The latter group includes the transit-friendly millennials and some empty-nesters who have been flocking to the growing city, drawn by the appeal of an urban lifestyle.
After Kathryn Cuddihee, 28, moved to Denver three years ago with her husband, she gave transit a go to get to her social work job in Centennial. The Uptown resident stuck with it for a year and a half, she said, walking to a light rail stop downtown and then schlepping a mile on Arapahoe Road after getting off on the other end.
But she gave up and began driving, in part because fares shot up to $9 roundtrip, making transit less economical. Closer to home, she’s frustrated at the hassle and transfers involved in what she thinks should be easy trips by bus to Cherry Creek or even nearby Capitol Hill.
“The buses are inconsistent, infrequent and limited, and it would be nice to feel like we are living in a city that had rail dispersed throughout the various neighborhoods,” Cuddihee said.
Admittedly, she’s influenced by her experience: “Having lived in places like D.C. and Boston, it just does not compare to the systems there.”
Streets at capacity
Denver isn’t as big as those cities, and its rail system is a newer, largely suburban commuter-focused system borne of RTD’s setup: It serves 2,340 square miles in eight counties.
But as the city absorbs more than 1,000 new residents each month, many of them attracted to its booming economy from larger cities on the coasts, it can’t help but invite such comparisons.
Advocates note that having the single regional agency carries benefits, particularly when it comes to marshaling the ambitious $5.3 billion FasTracks expansion — which continues to attract national plaudits — and balancing transit needs in disparate places.
RTD counts nearly 9,800 active stops on 127 bus routes, including the Free MallRide and newer Free MetroRide that traverse downtown.
But the metrowide system “has always been geared toward middle-class white workers,” in the view of Angie Rivera-Malpiede, a former RTD board member. She now is director of Northeast Transportation Connections, a Denver group that mostly focuses on helping low-income workers. “That was before millennials moved in. And the communities of the working poor got no incentives and were never looked at as a population to try to lure on the bus system.”
Officials including Mayor Michael Hancock acknowledge that streets such as often-choked Colorado Boulevard can’t absorb much more traffic.
In his July 11 State of the City address, which focused on disparities that persist despite the city’s success, he said his goal was that every resident would have “mobility freedom,” whether that meant access to more robust transit options, bike- and car-sharing systems such as Car2Go, or other alternatives to driving.
Amid a metro-area population boom that’s expected to continue for decades — worsening traffic congestion everywhere — state and regional transportation planners, as well as RTD officials, also long have cited the same imperative.
“Do we need more bus service? Yes. Do we have the money to do it? No,” said Rivera-Malpiede, who also is vice president of the Stapleton Foundation. “I think that’s the crux that we have at this point.”
Denver city officials — and participants in its 18-month Denver Moves: Transit planning process — hope to face that challenge head-on.
The Colfax corridor plan marks the first time in the modern era the city has taken the lead on a major transit project. For now, even as engineering is underway, funding for the $125 million to $135 million project isn’t pinned down. The city is working with RTD and Aurora on financing, which will include seeking federal funds.
The plan calls for reconfiguring Colfax for bus rapid transit, from the Auraria Campus through east Denver and possibly to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. It still faces skepticism from some residents about the reduction of automobile capacity on Colfax that will result from the new bus line, which would supplant much of RTD’s 15 Limited route.
While the citywide planning effort begins, smaller studies are examining the potential for improved bus access on several major streets in a more modest way, public works officials say.
Those include a tryout of a two-way bikeway configuration on Broadway, along with possible tweaks to its rush-hour transit lane. Multimodal studies are looking at potential improvements for Federal Boulevard from the north to south city limits and at Speer Boulevard/Leetsdale Drive through central and southeast Denver.
Figuring out costs
So far, the city is still grappling with whether — and how — it might step up to pay for transit system improvements benefiting its neighborhoods.
RTD welcomes any increased involvement from Denver, spokesman Nate Currey said. The transit agency’s focus in the near term, as it works to find ways to finish unfunded portions of several lines — including the $110 million central corridor light rail extension in Denver — will be on seeking public input and using its own analysis to improve the way the current system works, he said. The goal: to attract more riders to what RTD has.
That will happen largely within RTD’s operating budget, which was $467 million last year.
Upcoming initiatives should improve riders’ experience, Currey said, including a full rollout of its smart card prepaid fare system on all services, years after other big transit agencies began offering it.
Denver city officials, including transportation director Crissy Fanganello, say the citywide transit planning effort will consider potential ways to foot the bill, but first its participants must set priorities.
One option would be to follow in the footsteps of Boulder, which for two decades has “bought up” additional local bus service from RTD as it built ridership for branded lines with names including HOP, SKIP, JUMP and BOUND. Last year, that city paid RTD about $500,000 to partially subsidize two routes, while Boulder County and the University of Colorado also bought up service. Englewood contributes to a circulator shuttle connecting businesses and hospitals to the Englewood light rail stop.
Or Denver could, as the City Council suggested exploring in its work plan this year, create its own transit authority to supplement RTD service. Independent of that, the city could seek voter approval for a supplemental transit sales tax on top of RTD’s 1 percent rate.
Fanganello is skeptical of the need for a city transit authority. Meanwhile, she and transit advocates — as well as council members — are big on exploring potential alternatives to new bus lines, especially options enabled by technology.
The city made one offering this year when it rolled out a new smart phone app, called Go Denver, that allows users to compare routes and costs using public transit, driving, taxis, car-sharing services, bicycling and other modes of getting around.
“We’ll look at all the options” to pay for any potential transit initiatives, Fanganello said. “We need to identify what the problems are. What are the potential solutions, and what needs to be part of that conversation?”
Narrowing transit gaps
Nonprofit transit groups already have begun exploring ways to reduce gaps by providing transportation to and from light rail stations. In central Denver, Anderson’s group, Transportation Solutions, has pilot programs in the works that include providing subsidized rides on Lyft Line, a version of the ride-sharing service that pools riders going the same way. The targets in one, a partnership with the University of Denver, will be students traveling to campus; and in another, people who work a mile or two from the Colorado and I-25 station.
And the group is working out a program with another provider to set up shared rides to the Cherry Creek area, using pickup meeting points near where workers live in other parts of Denver, Anderson said. Elsewhere, Northeast Transportation Connections and Mile High Connects are among nonprofits similarly working on “first-mile/last-mile” transit solutions.
Another model that uses technology has been pursued by companies including Boston-based startup Bridj. It explored a launch in Denver but has held off amid uncertainty about RTD’s involvement and other logistics. In Boston, Washington and Kansas City, Mo., Bridj vehicles shuttle customers between set service zones based on dynamic routes that a computer builds as users reserve rides.
Soon Bridj will expand to Austin, Texas.
“We’d been holding open a launch slot for Denver, but ended up deciding to use that launch slot in Austin due to the difference in expressed attitude towards mass transit innovation,” said Bridj CEO Matthew George. “We’re optimistic that we can work to change that in the coming months. We’d be in Denver in a heartbeat if invited in by RTD and the city.”
For now, Robby Long, a 27-year-old resident of City Park West, relies more on his bike than the bus. He recently completed a master’s program in urban and regional planning and works as a fellow at Transportation Solutions.
While he credits the architects of RTD’s FasTracks plan with having the right vision to serve metro growth in the next 20 years, he says Denver is right to take on the Colfax corridor plan and chart out a citywide transit strategy.
“I don’t know what will come out of the plan,” he said, “but I think that’s a recognition that RTD is not going to provide the level of service that’s necessary to fill in the transit gaps in the city. Another entity will need to take that on in order to make it practical for the densifying urban cores.”
About the transportation series
This is the final installment in a Denver Post series examining the ways that increased traffic congestion is affecting drivers and residents — as well as plans and potential changes that could ease the crunch and expand transportation options. Previous stories explored traffic and population growth projections that could bring worse congestion to the metro area in coming decades; emerging technologies, including self-driving vehicles, that could upend the traffic equation; and the Colorado Department of Transportation’s reliance on tolled express lanes for highway expansions.
