Denver County Local Coordinating Council – December 18th, 2019

Speakers – Naomi Amohoaw-Goldneck from the American Heart Association shared about her participation with the Denver Streets Partnership.  Her focus is working on transit policy and establishing a working relationship with local City Council and Boards.  The American Heart Association believes that working with groups like DSP helps building healthier environments and providing transit equity to our populations.  Two of the major efforts for DSP includes, getting the City of Denver to dedicate funding on an annual basis.  Currently there is 18 million dollars dedicated to sidewalks and bike trails.  However, DSP has identified annual need of 120 million dollars to complete sidewalk and bike trails in twenty years.  The second major effort by DSP is to build working relationships with elected and appointed policy makers to insure that expansion and development of our City meets the needs of our citizens.

Our second speaker was Ron Burke from Lyft (Scooter and Bike Division).  He spoke about the development of scooter use in Denver. Lyft currently has 684 scooters in Denver.  Lyft has been working closely with City policy makers on making scooters safe and available to Denver citizens.  Ron shared that the City of Denver will be looking for one vendor in January to provide both scooter and dock or dockless bike system.  Lyft is hoping to be involved in both efforts as the lead contractor or sub-contractor.  Lyft currently owns “Motivate” the largest bike share resource in the country.  Lyft and DCLCC have had preliminary discussions on holding a safety rodeo in 2020.  Representatives from Cargo Bike and Lyft (scooters and bikes) will teach participants on how to safely operate their products.