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The city is headed back to the drawing board to figure out potential improvements to Quebec Street in Denver’s far east neighborhoods.

In September, Denver scrapped plans calling for two more traffic lanes on the major corridor, which currently has two lanes for most of its length. Principal Project Manager Brian Pinkerton said an environmental assessment for the project and public opinion revealed there would be major issues with the right-of-way affecting several homes along the corridor.

Now, the city is taking a step back to reevaluate. Its budget is significantly smaller: $1 to $3 million, down from the original $23 million. Federal grant money allocated by the Denver Regional Council of Governments became unavailable because it wasn’t used within the required timeframe.

The project focuses on the stretch of Quebec Street between 26th Avenue and 13th Avenue. The corridor intersects with another major roadway, Colfax, and runs through five neighborhoods: East Colfax, Montclair, North Park Hill, South Park Hill and Stapleton.

The overall vision for improvements has been tweaked. There will be more attention paid to improving the pedestrian experience along the corridor, though there are no set proposals yet. Broadly, Pinkerton said this could mean sidewalk improvements — or in some cases adding sidewalks where there are none — as well as adding bus shelters and improving crosswalks.

Denver Public Works spokeswoman Heather Burke-Bellile said in an email about 50 percent of the Quebec Street corridor has either no sidewalks or narrow attached sidewalks. That includes both east and west sides of the street.

“It is a heavy use corridor, including for pedestrians,” Pinkerton said. “Right now, there are dirt paths on the side of many stretches.”

Pinkerton said too many houses would be affected by the project if they continued adding additional northbound and southbound car lanes as initially planned. The impact would be “too great” to justify the improvement, Pinkerton added. It would have required the city taking bits of people’s properties, like driveways or even yards, to give the city space to make the infrastructure changes.

Sammy Sweet never expected this accolade.

He’s the Denver market’s top Lime scooter rider for the year.

With over 450 rides, in less than a year.

“I don’t pay for parking, and I don’t pay for gas. I don’t have to worry about it,” Sweet told FOX31.

He has a car and a bike, but he said the e-scooter is his preferred method of transportation around the metro area.

“The parking in the building that I work in is $10 a day, and that’s cheap with a voucher. So parking a car downtown on the 16th Street Mall is a planned event. Some days, with the traffic, you can’t park anywhere,” Sweet said.

FOX31 took a look at Denver’s public transit options. Without discounts, the RTD bus or the light rail costs $3 each for a local fare and $5.25 for regional.

Sweet says his e-scooter bill was around $1,300 this past year, averaging about $2.50 a ride, for him to travel the 10 blocks to and from work.

“It’s warmer on the light rail but much more convenient to be able to get off and on exactly where I want to go,” Sweet said.

He thinks this this could be the new face of Denver transit moving forward —minus a few snow days.

“Snowpocalypse is only a 4-to-6-day thing. And as soon as the streets are dry, I’m back on the scooter,” Sweet said.