Since voters approved a multi-billion dollar capital plan called FasTracks in 2004, the Regional Transportation District’s expansion efforts have been nearly all about trains — they’ve opened the four new rail lines since 2014, and there are plans for another next year.
Now though, the transit agency is exploring a new network that could have the speed of rail with much cheaper costs.
Not just any old bus, though. RTD is putting the finishing touches on a study of busy arterial roads that are good candidates for bus rapid transit. Those lines would use rubber on pavement and have other premium characteristics that are more typical of rail. The most important are dedicated lanes so buses run independently of traffic and service as frequent as every five minutes.
The popular FlatironFlyer is a bus rapid transit-like route between Denver and Boulder. Separately, RTD is studying another route from Boulder to Longmont. Other cities, like Minneapolis, have launched their own fledgling bus rapid transit networks in recent years.
Perhaps most importantly, the idea is for these buses to appeal to people who aren’t currently riding. They’re designed in a way, said Brian Welch, RTD’s senior manager for planning technical services, that signals to riders that the lines are different.
“They can tell by the vehicle,” he said. “They can tell by the station. And they know that it’s going to be frequent and reliable and fast.”
RTD sees faster buses as a way to move more people through dense corridors in a more cost-effective way than building trains, Welch said. Boosting ridership is a top concern for RTD, which is facing financial headwinds as it tries to simultaneously finish billions of dollars’ worth of unfinished train projects. But the plan could prove unpopular with the thousands of motorists who would likely be forced into fewer lanes — unless they decide to get on the bus.
The most suitable corridors are mostly in and around the urban core.
RTD’s feasibility study started with 30 or so corridors from Longmont in the north to Parker in the south. That’s since been winnowed down to eight: I-25 north of Denver, Park Avenue/38th Avenue, Speer Boulevard/Leetsdale Drive/Parker Road, Broadway/Lincoln Street, Colorado Boulevard, Alameda Avenue, Havana Street/Hampden Avenue, and Federal Boulevard.
Estimated capital costs for those range from $25 million to $80 million, with costs per mile of about $4 million. The most popular routes could carry more than 13,000 passengers a day by 2040.
Those rail projects took decades of planning and construction work, and could see ridership increase as development fills in around stations. But the impact of bus rapid transit lines down corridors like Federal could be felt far faster, Welch said, because they already cut through dense residential and commercial areas.
“We know that we’ll have to make decisions that involve resources where you’re choosing between A and B,” Welch said. “The future is to provide as much service throughout the district as possible at the best cost. And bus rapid transit has proven to be, around the United States and globally, a very good solution.”
Saul Lopez, from Denver, says he opposes any plans that would result in a loss of a vehicular travel lane on Federal Boulevard.
But losing a lane of traffic is a tough proposition for people who use those streets every day. Saul Lopez, a house painter from Denver, said he often carried his materials in his van up and down Federal.
“You can’t really do that on a bus,” he observed from a gas station parking lot.
Eric Molina, a college student from southwest Denver, said he’s seen traffic on Federal get worse and worse in recent years. He’d rather Federal stay completely open to cars, though he’s open to change if it’s more efficient.
“I used to take the bus to school. I’ve seen some crazy stuff happen on the bus so I try to avoid it,” he said. “But if I need to, I’ll take it.”
There’s no set timeline for any of these projects.
RTD will wrap up its study in late 2019 and then start applying for federal grants. In order to take over traffic lanes, it’ll also need buy-in from local governments, or in the case of state highways like Federal Boulevard, the state of Colorado.
RTD said some cities like Westminster and Broomfield are very supportive, while others like Greenwood Village are less so. In a statement, CDOT Executive Director Shoshana Lew did not commit to handing over any lanes. But she called bus rapid transit an “effective option for providing efficient access along key corridors.”
“We look forward to seeing the results of RTD’s study, especially as it relates to putting ideas on the table for improving transit reliability on urban arterials roads in metro Denver that are within CDOT’s purview,” she said.
The other big fish is Denver. And as that car-centric city grows and densifies, it appears it’s ready to play ball.
“We have a finite system that has a limited amount of capacity and we can only move a certain amount of people,” said Ryan Billings, transit and corridors planning supervisor at Denver Public Works. “People movement is really the crux of the conversation.”
Billings cautioned that the city will need to do a variety of studies on each corridor before any major changes are made, though he said Denver is generally supportive of RTD’s plan for faster buses. It’s also moving forward on its own plan for BRT along Colfax Avenue. There’s a need now, he said, and it’s only going to get more pressing over time.
“I can either beat my head against the steering wheel in that traffic in 10 years,” he said. “Or I can make a decision, or a choice to, potentially get on that bus in that dedicated lane and get there a little bit quicker.”
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Domino’s Pizza delivered a case to the US Supreme Court this summer and the justices rejected it on Oct. 7, the first day of the 2019 term. The court’s action was a refusal to consider website accessibility standards that would have affected many businesses working online.
The matter stemmed from a blind man being unable to order a pizza via the company’s website or app and involves the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a law designed to ensure equal access to all. When the measure passed in 1990, internet businesses were in their infancy. But it required all companies to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.
How the ADA translates in today’s age is up for debate. Various organizations offer website accessibility rules, but the US government hasn’t dictated a specific set of standards associated with the ADA, which means liability for alleged violations is resolved in litigation—creating an uncertain legal landscape.
As Domino’s noted in its petition (pdf), some courts have held that the ADA applies only to online businesses with physical locations, others have decided it imposes requirements on all online businesses, and others still have found it doesn’t apply to the internet at all.
Domino’s wanted the justices to clarify how the ADA should be read with respect to websites and apps, warning of a “tsunami” of litigation if the high court declined to clear up the confusion.
Still, Domino’s might have dodged a bullet when its case was rejected, as the justices, upon review, could have clarified contrary to Domino’s liking, with nationwide implications.
Advocates for the disabled celebrated the high court’s rejection of the case. Now the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court, which decided the ADA applies to Domino’s online, is not up for review and is the law in parts of the US, including California. “This is a significant win for the disability community,” said Sean Bradley, co-founder of AudioEye, which helps websites be legally compliant with accessibility requirements.
And while the case is a US one, it could prove a source of inspiration elsewhere, and already has people abroad talking.
As we age, it’s harder and harder to get outside. And that’s a shame since getting out into nature has been linked to a significant increase in people’s health and happiness.
On top of that, one in three seniors in the United States reports being lonely. Loneliness has been found to increase the risks of heart attacks, strokes, depression, anxiety, and early death.
The benefits of getting out into nature and having someone to talk to can be numerous for the elderly. That’s why Ole Kassow from Denmark decided to start the Cycling Without Age project back in 2012.
Kassow started taking some elderly members of his local community on rides in a rickshaw and quickly saw the benefits.
Source: Cycling Without Age
“I saw an elderly gentleman sitting in front of a nursing home, Kassow explained in an interview with Generations Working Together. “As usual, I was on my bike and came up with the idea that maybe he wanted to join me and we could get to know each other. I rented a rickshaw and it took off from there. The man became my friend, his name is Thorkild.”
Kassow went on to explain the benefit of taking the elderly for a ride:
“Our modern fast-paced lifestyle means that we value youth and careers and sometimes forget to appreciate the older generation and their wisdom. That means many people become isolated and lonely as they grow old.”
Source: Cycling Without Age
Seeing the benefit in Thorkild, Kassow decided to start Cycling Without Age, which has since spread worldwide and has more than 1100 chapter locations, 1500 rickshaws, and 10,000 pilots.
Anyone can sign up to take an elderly person for a ride, but volunteers ride rickshaws that are empty to get them trained. They then take their team leader, known as a pilot, for a ride before they can start taking real passengers out and about.
Kassow explained how his idea spread so fast:
“Luckily the media have taken an interest in what we do and we see how the interest is often sparked by a story in the news. The first international interest came after my TED Talk in the autumn of 2014. Recently the BBC video ‘Amazing Humans’ about Fraser and Mary in Scotland was shown 26 million times. Cycling Without Age addresses challenges of loneliness and active mobility, which seem to appeal to everybody.”
https://drmac-co.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-27-at-6.07.47-PM-e1572221362772.png394394userhttps://drmac-co.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/DRMAC20logo1.jpguser2019-10-28 00:10:202019-10-28 00:10:20Volunteers are taking seniors out on rickshaw rides to get them into nature
A contentious 2017 decision by the Denver City Council has rippled into a new plan by the Hancock administration to make developers promote walking, biking and transit when they build stuff.
A quick rewind: Back in 2017 a split council voted to make homebuilders include parking with their projects where it previously wasn’t required. The electeds who won said they were simply responding to constituents who feared apartment buildings with no private off-street parking would squeeze them out of the available publicly owned curbside spots. Other council members said forcing developers to build expensive parking spaces — they can cost tens of thousands of dollars per stall — would raise housing costs and generate more driving trips.
Fast-forward to 2019: At the direction of council members who claimed Denver’s non-car options were too sparse to forgo new parking spots, Denver Public Works began developing a “transportation demand management” program. That’s a nerdy way of saying that if developers want to build places that will attract more people, they will have to promote other ways to move around than driving.
Incentives to finding sustainable transportation include things like providing RTD passes for tenants and condo owners or funding a B-cycle station onsite. Disincentives to driving include charging for parking.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean that every single person needs to be on a bus or bike but if we offer better choices … then we can better use our existing infrastructure,” said Zach Wallace Mendez, who manages the program for Public Works. He spoke in front of the City Council’s land use and transportation committee on Tuesday.
Denver aims to drastically reduce the share of commuters who drive alone while drastically increasing the share of commuters who walk, bike and ride transit. By 2030 the city thinks it can take the 68 percent of solo car commutes down to 50 percent while raising the other modes from a combined 15 percent (approximately) to 30 percent.
Growth generates demand for our streets and pollution in our air. Influencing travel behavior with carrots and sticks is one tool in Public Works’ toolbox that can give people a way out of congestion while reducing harmful emissions, according to the streets department.
Still, Wallace Mendez said it’s a “mitigation tool” and “I certainly don’t want it to oversell itself.”
One potential hitch: ensuring developers make good on their end of the bargain.
The city’s strategy is still in draft form, but as of right now new buildings would have to build some type of sustainable transport infrastructure, onsite or off. Residential buildings with at least 45 homes and commercial buildings of at least 50,000 square feet would have stricter requirements — like commuter surveys to measure the program’s impact.
A website will take all the elements of a given project and spit out a non-single-occupancy vehicle commute rate that developers — and later property managers — need to achieve. Then they’ll choose from a menu of options. They will be responsible for managing their programs and reporting the results to the city government.
‘I still am really curious about whey we’re gonna let the developers do their own monitoring,” CdeBaca said, adding that the city needs ways to ensure compliance.
Government inspectors would perform spot checks, said Jennifer Hillhouse, Denver’s director of transportation planning.
But enforcement is a matter of resources, Wallace Mendez said: “Currently the program is me.”
Denver is behind peer cities, including the perennial urban transportation champions, Seattle.
“We’re not the only city doing this,” Hillhouse said. “A lot of other cities, peer cities, are quite ahead of us.”
Seattle and Washington state have had a transportation demand management program for decades. The city is growing at a rapid pace like Denver, yet even as it’s added thousands of people, Hillhouse said 90 percent of the city’s net gain in trips were made by walking, biking and transit.
Less than half of Seattle commutes, about 47 percent, are done solo in a car, according to 2017 census data. The city’s TDM strategy is only one reason for that figure — its density and robust transit system are bigger ones.
Public Works officials also cited Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco Fairfax County, Va., and Cambridge, Mass. as cities with similar programs in place.
If all goes according to plan, Public Works hopes to implement the program in spring 2020.
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The mural, a train trailed by ribbons of color, is wholesome enough for a children’s book. It’s actually a paint-by-number artwork, which various residents colored in. For Arvada, Colorado, the Denver suburb that placed the mural downtown for the grand opening of its new Gold Line commuter rail station, it’s a symbol of the town’s newest chapter.
Amid recent reinvestments in Olde Town Arvada, a neighborhood of brewpubs, independent stores, and restaurants, the arrival of a rail link to Denver this past spring, after years of delay, is another catalyst in the suburb’s growth. Arvada has already seen $400 million in investment since 2006, including streetscaping and downtown redevelopment, according to Daniel Ryley, executive director of the Arvada Economic Development Association, but it’s the arrival of the rail link that has fueled even more new development and a spike in economic activity. Sales tax revenue in Olde Town grew 75 percent between 2013 and 2018 as new businesses opened in anticipation of the train’s arrival.
Within a half-mile of the station, more than 1,100 new apartments, condos, and townhomes have gone up in the last few years, according to Maureen Phair, executive director of the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority, as well as a Hilton Garden hotel. An additional 250 units will break ground next year right next to the station.
“What we don’t want to do is contribute to sprawl, traffic, and pollution,” says Phair. “The best way to avoid that is building density around these stations, and really building a place, so people can ride to work and walk to dinner.”
Within a half-mile of the station, more than 1,100 new apartments, condos, and townhomes have gone up in the last few years, according to Maureen Phair, executive director of the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority.Courtesy Arvada Urban Renewal Authority
The new rail line, Ryley says, and the 20-minute ride to downtown Denver, is making it easier for businesses to retain and attract workers, building on the successful development of a walkable commercial district. Like other newly connected communities along the 11-mile, seven-station G line, such as Wheat Ridge, Arvada is becoming more walkable and urban, with denser housing. These developments are changing perceptions of what Arvada can be.
“We were fortunate to be able to host a station right in the heart of our Olde Town community,” Ryley says. “It’s a real unique asset.”
Growing cities see rail as a ticket to world-class status
The new G Line, part of a number of recent and planned expansions of Denver’s Regional Transportation District, shows how growing metros in the West and the Sun Belt are betting big on improved suburban transit, including expanding light-rail lines and building new commuter rail services. It’s a trend that’s taken off over the last 15 years, according to Paul Lewis, vice president of policy and finance at Eno Center for Transportation. The American Public Transportation Association says commuter rail use has been steadily increasing since the late ‘90s, and grew 9.2 percent, or by more than 42 million additional trips, in the last decade alone.
Mimicking the commuter rail lines that stretch out from Northeast cities like New York, these new suburban transit options tend to be renovations of underutilized or unused freight lines. Similar plans propose or plan to open new lines in the next five-plus years in Seattle, Houston, Massachusetts, Dallas, and Miami.
“As cities grow and want to be world-class and compete on a global scale, they need to show a map with transit and rail lines,” says Lewis.
The price is certainly right: By repurposing existing lines, transit agencies forgo costly land acquisition and rail construction costs and focus on stations, parking lots, and passenger cars. Around these stations, transit-oriented development has spread and walkable and profitable downtown suburban developments have increased.
In the northern suburbs of Dallas, where Dallas-Area Rapid Transit (DART) plans to open the 26-mile Silver Line extension in 2022 to knit together growing cities such as Grapevine, Carrollton, Richardson, and Plano, roughly $1 billion in commercial space, multifamily, and retail is taking shape in and around planned stations, according to David Leininger, a former DART executive helping Richardson and Addison on transit-oriented developments.
This new generation of commuter rail is far from perfect. Because the routes are built on existing freight lines that run like spokes out of downtowns, they may not connect the densest areas of housing, jobs, and entertainment in each region. This problem hinders Denver’s growing rail system, which doesn’t terminate in the densest part of the city. And in many cases, bus rapid transit could do a better job of connecting the city to the car-dependent suburbs by utilizing existing high-use roadways and traveling on a more strategic, flexible route at a much lower cost.
Sales tax revenue in Olde Town grew 75 percent between 2013 and 2018, as new businesses opened in anticipation of the train’s arrival.Courtesy Arvada Urban Renewal Authority
These new lines also run on hours designed to appeal to more affluent downtown office workers—sometimes called “choice riders,” as opposed to “dependent riders”—when the majority of transit users don’t actually work a 9-to-5 day. And while local transit measures have been mostly successful at the ballot box over the last few years, high-profile defeats, especially in North Carolina, Nashville, and the Atlanta suburbs, where local voters rejected big-ticket rail expansions, show that not everyone is convinced commuter rail is a bargain for taxpayers.
But in cities where funding has come through, many of these new transit options have spurred building booms along transit corridors, and they’ve shown that a more sustainable, car-free commute is possible, at least for a small group of riders.
How rail lines link the suburbs to jobs and growth
Ryley says that just the announcement of the new G Line station in Arvada ramped up development. A new wave of construction broke ground in 2011, way before the G Line was supposed to be finished (delays pushed the projected 2016 opening date back to this May). When it was clear the line had enough support, funding, and momentum to be completed, a wave of multifamily projects began breaking ground, such as the 26-acre Water Tower Village, and new independent businesses opened their doors in Olde Town, including the Bluegrass Lounge, Hunter Bay coffee lounge, Homegrown Tap & Dough, and Steubens Restaurant.
Ryley says that by linking the city to customers and workers, the G Line is helping business boom. Other developing or expanding rail systems have seen, or are betting on, similar growth. South Florida’s Tri-Rail, which has served the Miami area since opening in 1989, has seen 6 percent passenger growth over the last five years to 16,000 riders daily, and a proposed 9-mile Downtown Miami Link would let system riders take the train all the way to the forthcoming MiamiCentral Station.
Texas cities also have high hopes for rail-led development. Houston will ask voters to approve a $7.5 billion expansion of transit, including more light rail and a rail link to Hobby Airport. Dallas’s Silver Line, a $1.2 billion investment in a radial line linking northern suburbs and other existing rail services, aims to better intertwine a crescent-shaped swath of emerging cities and job centers from Plano to the stockyards near downtown Fort Worth.
According to Leininger, the former DART exec, the suburbs see commuter rail as a significant infrastructure boost, and have responded with investments and policies stimulating new development. Grapevine is modeling its station on Denver’s Union Station (“You walk off the platform and feel like you’re walking into a development,” says Leininger), Richardson established a tax-increment finance district to raise $25 million to assist with construction, Addison bought up 12 acres near the station that it’s selling to a master developer, and the University of Texas-Dallas, which will get its own station, has pushed development on the north side of campus adjacent to the station.
“Suburbs have actually embraced transit-oriented development more enthusiastically than the city of Dallas,” says Leininger. “That urban-suburban combination is a big selling point these days.”
When the Silver Line finally opens in 2022, there will be developments already open for business near every station. And the transit nodes created at stations where the Silver Line hooks up with the Green and Red lines will really create dense areas of development. Leininger, who also works with the Urban Land Institute, contributed to a study of all 100 rail stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, including DART and other systems, and found that developments adjacent to a rail station always commanded a premium compared to the same project elsewhere in the region.
Limits to the commuter rail rebirth
Dallas-area developers, sadly, seem to be an exception to the rule. The DART Silver Line will start operations just as community efforts to encourage dense development near stations, through investments and land use rules, begin to bear fruit. But most U.S. commuter rail still fails in this regard, surrounding stations with parking lots instead of shops, jobs, and homes.
“The big problem we see with lots of these new train systems isn’t the distances they travel, it’s the land use,” says Eno’s Lewis. “Surrounding areas aren’t incentivized for dense land use, only riders willing to park and ride downtown.”
The American Public Transportation Association says commuter rail use has been increasing for the last decade, growing 9.2 percent, or by more than 42 million additional trips.Courtesy Arvada Economic Development Association
The other big downside is transit frequency. U.S. systems run paltry service past peak hours, making it hard for these lines to function like true everyday transit. By comparison, mature European systems, like the RER commuter rail servicing areas ringing Paris, run multiple times an hour and act as extended light-rail or subway lines.
Still, while transit ridership has seen troubling declines across the board, Lewis and others do see commuter rail and efforts to increase service becoming more popular. Even the defeat in Atlanta’s Gwinnett County was the closest the area has ever come to transit expansion.
Lewis believes change requires investment and consistency. Cities and states that propose and pass funding for these systems, invest in land-use plans that develop areas around stations, and create service schedules that serve all users can create a virtuous cycle: better transit service, more business in tax-collecting transit-adjacent developments, and more money to support transit expansion.
Arvada has seen a boom with the G Line’s arrival, and wants to make sure it stays. Ryley says the city will soon embark on a comprehensive rewrite of zoning and land-use policies to help develop more density, as well as draw more foot traffic and more diverse businesses. Opening the rail line is just the first step.
Phair says that the city is already looking at a second hotel and adding more commercial real estate around the new station. The parking garage near the station is full every day, and many residents of the new apartments nearby have been able to give up their cars. But development in the Denver area is “such a four-letter word.” There’s lingering public sentiment against change, new development, and rising rents.
“This is great planning, and smart development, and we need to find out how to communicate the value of these developments,” she says. “When we don’t take advantage of the proximity to transit, that’s not good for the future. It’s a shame when development occurs and doesn’t take advantage of a transit link.”
A plan to remodel Denver’s 16th Street Mall is drawing fire from blind Coloradans. They say the changes will put their safety at risk. At issue is whether street curbs should be removed.
City planners want a curbless pedestrian mall, but blind people say that would make it not only difficult for them to navigate the mall, but also dangerous.
“The curbs are a universal symbol for a barrier from a sidewalk to traffic,” said Cody Bair, who is blind and lives and works downtown.
Brian Pinkerton with Denver Public Works has a different take on curbs.
“Rather than have the curb be a remnant or a relic of a street, this is really something much greater than an ordinary street.”
It is so extraordinary that the 1.2 mile street is getting a $100 million makeover that includes getting rid of the curbs and replacing them with a different kind of barrier.
(credit: CBS)
“That will be filled with trees, lights, fixed furnishings. We think the new design is vastly safer for all people including the sight impaired people because you’ve got 5-9 feet full of things separating you,” said Pinkerton.
He says the city is also considering pavers or a grooved border as a tactile separation between the street and sidewalk. Bair says the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado has been urging the city for months to abandon its curbless plan.
He says the mall is the largest tourist attraction in the state and making it curbless would put blind visitors lives at risk too.
“We’re on board with plans to update the mall, but we just want to make sure that whatever those plans are and however it’s done that it’s as accessible and as inclusive to everyone as possible. If it’s done wrong, it’s going to have devastating effects on us.”
(credit: CBS)
Pinkerton says they have not made a final decision on whether to remove the curbs. He met with members of the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado Tuesday evening.
“Safety for all people including site impaired people is paramount in importance for us.”
The city plans to begin designing the new mall in the next few months. Construction won’t start until 2021.
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