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July 2010 – Downtown Street Reconstruction

Posted by Ken on July 23, 2010

Three street reconstruction projects are underway in Downtown Denver. Here’s a quick look at these civic investments—two of which will greatly enhance the pedestrian environment in the vicinity.

First, let’s start with the one that is a straight-forward street reconstruction project. 15th Street is being rebuilt in concrete between the bridge over the South Platte River and the intersection of 15th/29th/Boulder/Umatilla (one of those fun grid-colliding Downtown intersections). As a Lower Highland resident, I can vouch for the fact that 15th Street through there, particularly around the Platte Street intersection, has been a bumpy ride for years. The street reconstruction is about 50% complete, as you can see from these photos:

2010-07-23_15th1 2010-07-23_15th2

Next is Larimer Street between 15th and 17th. This project includes reconstructing the street in concrete (from the current asphalt) as well as removing one traffic lane and widening the sidewalk with the reclaimed space. The sidewalk expansion will occur on the Writer Square/Tabor Center side of the block. While the Larimer sides of those two mixed-use complexes are not all that interesting from a pedestrian perspective, they’re more interesting than the Larimer Place/Barclay condo towers on the other side of the street. Bulb-outs (or, if you prefer, bump-outs) will be installed at each intersection, shortening the crosswalk distance across Larimer even more. Currently, Larimer is four through lanes in this area, and at 15th, the left two lanes continue as through lanes into Larimer Square and the right two lanes are right-turn-only lanes onto 15th. After the reconstruction, there will be three through lanes, and at 15th Street the left lane will continue into Larimer Square, the right lane will be right-turn-only onto 15th, and the center lane will be a combo through/right-turn lane.

2010-07-23_larimer1 2010-07-23_larimer2

Finally, there’s the Colfax/13th/Tremont intersection. Chris blogged about this project a couple of months ago. That project is now under construction. Here’s a Google Earth aerial of the existing intersection (an automobile-oriented mess) and the diagram Chris provided of the reconfigured, more-pedestrian-friendly, new intersection:

2010-07-23_tremont3

Here’s a photo of the corner I took this morning:

2010-07-23_tremont2

There are more infrastructure improvements planned for the Downtown area coming up… topics for future blogs.

Filed under Highland, Infrastructure, Lower Downtown, Pedestrians, Streets, Upper Downtown.
14 Comments

Wewatta Tail Tracks are History

Posted by Ken on May 18, 2010

We interrupt our review of the Denver Union Station plan to bring you some breaking news about… Union Station (sort of).

The tail tracks that stretched past Union Station, crossed 15th Street, and ran along Wewatta Street to just before the bridge over Cherry Creek: they were removed this past weekend. Their removal is part of the grand plan for Union Station, and the timing of their removal was contingent upon other work on tracks north of the station being completed first.

The importance of the Wewatta tail tracks removal, however, is that the unhappy state of Wewatta between 15th and Cherry Creek will finally be fixed. That’s the last piece of Wewatta Street that hasn’t been reconstructed in concrete and reconfigured to four lanes. When Opus Northwest completed their 1400 Wewatta project in 2008, they did install nice wide sidewalks and streetscaping, but they still had to work around the tail tracks as it was too early to take them out. Meanwhile, there’s no sidewalk at all along the west side of Wewatta.

With the removal of the tail tracks, Denver Public Works plans to reconstruct this last stretch of Wewatta in concrete to match Wewatta’s 4-lane configuration between Cherry Creek and Speer, and north of 15th Street. They’ll also complete the sidewalks and improve the pedestrian crosswalks at the Wewatta/15th intersection. I believe they also plan to add left-turn arrows at the intersection. Exactly when all this will take place, I’m not sure, but I assume it will happen some time this year. Also, new traffic signals will be installed at 15th and Delgany, which will further improve mobility in the area and give pedestrians a sorely needed crosswalk to get to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Here are a few pics I took with my phone yesterday afternoon. Top left: chopped-off tracks behind the EPA Building. Top right: former RR crossing at 15th looking south. Lower left: same crossing looking north. Lower right: stretch of Wewatta due for reconstruction.

2010-05-18_tracks1 2010-05-18_tracks2
2010-05-18_tracks3 2010-05-18_tracks4

Filed under Infrastructure, Streets.
3 Comments

16th Street Mall Urban Design Plan – Public Meeting TONITE!

Posted by Chris on February 4, 2010

As many know, the 16th Street Mall is currently the centerpiece of an important conversation.  A technical assessment completed in the Fall of 2009 investigated the construction and economic viability of the Mall’s existing surface.  Phase 2 – an Urban Design Plan focused on imaging the Mall of the next 30 years – is currently on-going… and tonite is an opportunity to see what designers and the project’s Steering Committee are considering. 

The presentation will include 3 alternative concepts for the Mall’s functional, operational, and physical future.  And as if that weren’t enough to get you excited, Laurie Olin (one of the original designers of the Mall and an internationally-respected landscape architect) will be on had to offer his impressions.  The details below:

16th Street Mall Urban Design Plan Public Meeting #2, Thursday February 4 (today)

5:30 – 7:30 pm, Wellington Webb Building, Room 1.B.6 (enter from Court Place)

Filed under Events & Meetings, Pedestrians, Public Spaces, Streets, Transit.
6 Comments

Denver Living Streets

Posted by Ken on November 22, 2009

Vincent Carroll and the Denver Post just don’t get it. In an October 15 editorial, the Post criticizes Denver Living Streets, the City and County of Denver’s new policy initiative based on Complete Streets principles that provides a balance in how we use our public rights-of-way throughout the city.

The editorial, which you can read here, agrees with most of the arguments in favor of the Living Streets initiative. The editorial correctly points out that “…much good could come from re-imagining how we structure our streets and roads, bike paths and transit systems to make them more pedestrian-friendly…” and that “…our reliance on the automobile has disadvantages aplenty. Though cars have become more fuel-efficient and cleaner, millions of vehicle trips per day have an enormous environmental and societal impact. The obesity epidemic and its mushrooming medical costs show us that our communities ought to be more walkable. Major roads lined with big-box stores, chain restaurants and parking lots aren’t pleasing to the eye.”

Nevertheless, the Post challenges the Living Streets initiative because it would allow for vehicle lanes to be reduced or converted to other transportation uses. Thus, according to the Post’s reasoning, any pro-bike/ped/transit policy that could conceptually increase automobile traffic congestion or inconvenience motorists is an ill-conceived policy. Basically, the Post’s editorial position boils down to: we’re all for fixing the problem as long as the solution doesn’t affect what’s causing the problem. The philosophy of “automobiles first, everything else second” is what has gotten us into this mess in the first place. We’ve spent the last six decades inconveniencing (to put it kindly) bikes, pedestrians, and transit within our public realm. If the city’s new policy of providing a balanced approach to the function and design of our streets occasionally results in an inconvenienced motorist, so be it. In fact, some inconvenience for motorists is exactly what we need to begin changing the dysfunctional behaviors that have resulted from the mindset that the only way to get around town is by private motorcar. Denver Living Streets doesn’t aim to just better organize our streets; it seeks to fundamentally alter our attitudes about our built environment and how we choose to transport ourselves within it. To do anything less than that is to maintain the status quo, and the automobile-fixated status quo is unhealthy, inefficient, inequitable, and unsustainable.

As part of its rationale, the Post states that “…Denver already has been constructed as a sprawling city over a large geographic area and that the overwhelming majority of us get around in cars.” Not only does the Post rely on faulty logic by citing automobile dependency as the reason for not solving automobile dependency, it doesn’t even get its premise right. Denver is sprawly in places except for the big chunk of the city that isn’t, such as the dozens of mixed-use, walkable, center city neighborhoods built originally around streetcar stops that are (not coincidentally) some of the most desirable places in the city to live. And, while a lot of people do use cars to get around, a full one-third of the population doesn’t even own a car and 20% of car owners don’t drive to work.

The Post editorial board says they can’t “see how Colorado Boulevard could ever become the kind of walkable LoDo environment that springs to mind when folks say they want to trade traffic lanes for bike paths and pedestrian malls.” Maybe Denverites in the 1930s didn’t envision that 40 years later their extensive streetcar system would be completely gone and that half of their Downtown would be demolished and replaced with parking lots, but that’s what happened. Maybe Denverites in the 1960s didn’t envision that 40 years later their blighted Lower Downtown skid row would be the city’s hippest entertainment district with million dollar lofts and a major league baseball stadium, but that’s what happened. Maybe the Post editorial board can’t envision streets like Colorado Boulevard as anything more than they are today, but many of us can envision such a thing. It won’t be easy and it may take 40 years, but there is no reason why the Colorado Boulevards and Hampden Avenues out there have to be condemned to a future that looks like the present. With Denver Living Streets, at least we increase the odds that those streets will someday become something better than they are now.

Last week, Denver Post opinion columnist Vincent Carroll posted an article that also questions the Denver Living Streets initiative. Like the editorial, he acknowledges the shortcomings of our current automobile-dominated environment and agrees with many of the goals of the initiative, but then warns that “Living Streets also seems determined to restrict our mobility, although it doesn’t put it that way, of course.” Mr. Carroll falsely accuses a policy initiative specifically designed to increase mobility of intending to do the exact opposite, and then criticizes it for being dishonest. Also, Mr. Carroll’s phrase “our mobility” tells us a lot about his remarkably narrow perspective: his “our” means only “those who drive cars” and his “mobility” means only “driving around by car.”

Mr. Carroll concludes his column with the line: “Living streets? By all means. But not at the price of personal mobility.” Apparently Mr. Carroll doesn’t believe that pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders are pursuing personal mobility when they occupy the public right-of-way. Apparently Mr. Carroll doesn’t even recognize pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders as being members of the public for which our public rights-of-way exist to serve.

Fortunately, our leaders and policymakers at city hall have more vision and a more enlightened perspective than the Denver Post editorialists. For several generations, we have mistakenly advanced policies counter to the city-building principles that gave us the urban environments we treasure the most. Nationally, that trend is reversing and locally, the city of Denver is doing its part through the proposed form/context-based zoning code and initiatives like Denver Living Streets. While the motor vehicle remains an important and necessary component of our transportation system, we can no longer afford to allow its use to monopolize our public realm. Living Streets is a big step in the right direction.

Filed under Automobiles, Bicycles, Media, Pedestrians, Plans & Policies, Streets, Transit.
28 Comments

14th Street Makeover

Posted by Ken on November 4, 2009

Here’s a press release from the Downtown Denver Partnership with good news!

~~~~~

Downtown Denver’s 14th Street will soon emerge has a vibrant pedestrian-oriented thoroughfare, thanks to the successful result of the November 3rd election in which private property owners along the street voted to contribute $4 million to the overall $14 million cost of the streetscaping project through the formation of a general improvement district.

Through this public-private initiative, sidewalks will be expanded, encouraging outdoor seating and ground floor shopping and dining uses that will bolster the experience one has when walking down the street. Key elements include the addition of about 200 trees, as well as new flower planters, better “wayfinding” signage, crosswalk bulb-outs, improved pedestrian lighting, decorative street corner monuments, bike racks and enhanced maintenance. A dedicated bicycle lane will be added in the street and on-street parking will be retained.

14th Street is becoming known as the “Ambassador Street” due to the diversity of visitor-oriented uses found along this corridor, including the Colorado Convention Center, the Denver Performing Arts Complex, the Hyatt Regency at Colorado Convention Center, and four other new or recently-constructed hotels. Altogether, $1.5 billion in public and private investments have been made along the corridor since 2002. The new streetscaping project will build on these investments to strengthen this new identity. The district covers the entire the 12 block length between Market Street and Colfax Avenue and extends approximately one-half block on either side of 14th Street.

“With the completion of this ambitious plan, 14th Street will serve as an excellent complement to the 16th Street Mall,” said Tami Door, President & CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership. “Consistent with the vision of the 2007 Downtown Area Plan, 14th Street will truly be a magnet for pedestrians, which will benefit residents, business owners and the overall community.”

The project will cost roughly $14 million, with property owners contributing $4 million, and $10 million coming out of the Better Denver Bond Program, which was created in 2007.

“14th Street will see improvements on every level, from bike lanes to traffic signals, to sidewalk improvements and other placemaking installations for a truly multi-modal corridor,” said Deputy Mayor and Manager of Public Works, Bill Vidal. “The project is unique in that in addition to the Better Denver Bond funds, we have the property owners contributing to the improvements and we are thrilled to see this public private partnership moving forward.”

Meeting and consulting with property owners in the District was a four year process, assumed by the City, the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District and the Downtown Denver Partnership. A consultant team including Parsons Brinkerhoff, CRL & Associates and studioINSITE assisted with design and consensus building services. From February 2009 to June 2009, eight two hour workshops were held with interested property owners, other stakeholders, City representatives and representatives from the Downtown Denver Partnership.

“We are glad we could contribute to a greater ’sense of place’ along 14th Street,” said Josh Fine of Focus Property Group. “As property owners in the area, we recognized the opportunity we had not only to improve the value of what we own, but the type of experience people have when they’re here.”

Construction is slated to begin in the summer of 2010 with the goal of completion in the fall of 2011.

~~~~~

Here is a 3D animation video of the project, modeled and produced by Parsons Brinkerhoff’s Project Visualization Group in Denver. Animation team: Brian Peterson (Viz lead), Eric Martens, Leslie Hodgdon (PM), Ryan Sander, Barry Bankhead, Larissa Holderness, and Sara Wedul (AE Intro).

Filed under Central Downtown, Plans & Policies, Streets, Upper Downtown, Urban Design.
27 Comments

#1: No More Surface Parking Lots!

Posted by Ken on February 5, 2009

Does this #1 come as a surprise to you? I should think not. Really, what could be more anti-urban than surface parking lots? Those of you who have been reading DenverInfill for many years now knew this was going to be #1 in the Top 10 list, right?

As I’ve said many times before, think about the cities that people choose to travel to solely for the urban experience (museums, shopping, culture, history, architecture, etc.): New York, San Francisco, Paris, London, etc.—no surface parking lots! There seems to be a direct correlation between the appeal of a place as an urban destination and the lack of surface parking lots at that place. As a tourist destination, Downtown Denver is doing pretty well considering the number of surface lots we still have. Over the past twenty years, as surface lots have been replaced by shops, hotels, offices, and condos, we’ve seen Downtown Denver’s appeal as a destination in its own right improve commensurately. To reach true urban excellence, we must eliminate all surface parking lots in Downtown Denver.

Unlike some of the other items on the Top 10 list, the city alone cannot accomplish this goal of surface parking lot eradication. Demand for the uses that would occupy new buildings built in place of surface lots must first exist, and the private sector must then respond to that demand by implementing the appropriate supply of vertical development. Consequently, since we’re at the mercy of the free market, it’s going to take a while—many decades—before we get rid of all of our surface lots in Downtown. But one thing that the city can do that it currently isn’t, is proactively readying parking lot sites for eventual development through land assemblage. One of the biggest barriers we have in Downtown to replacing parking lots with new buildings is the fractured ownership of so many parking lot sites. The problem is particularly prevalent in the Arapahoe Square and Civic Center districts. Take, for example, Blocks 045-E and 046-E in Civic Center:


On Block 046-E, the only building on the block that’s new is the 1200 Delaware townhome project, visible in the aerial under construction at the corner of 12th and Delaware. Everything else on the block could be scraped. So, excluding 1200 Delaware, on the west half of the block, there are 10 parcels owned by 8 different owners. On the east half of the block, there are 8 parcels owned by 4 different owners, with only one owner common to both halves. That means that to assemble all of Block 046-E except for the 1200 Delaware project, one would have to negotiate the purchase of land from 11 different owners.

On Block 045-E, the only building on the block that’s not expendable is the relatively new Balustrade Condos at the corner of 12th and Cherokee. Everything else on the block could go. Excluding the Balustrade then, on the west half of the block, there are 7 parcels owned by 6 different owners, and on the east half of the block, there are 8 parcels owned by 5 different owners; once again, only one of those owners common to both halves. For this block, you’d have to negotiate with 10 different owners.

So, here we have two blocks in a prime location, just steps from the Art Museum and the Civic Center’s other cultural amenities, that should be developed into a nice mix of mid-rise housing projects featuring ground-floor retail and restaurant spaces. But what developer in his or her right mind would want to tackle assembling even a portion of these blocks? Several of the parcels are owned by “family trusts” or by families known for their recalcitrance, and once the word got out that developers were trying to assemble the block, everyone would double or triple their asking price, rendering the effort unfeasible. It’s unlikely we’ll see anything of appropriate density built on either of these blocks any time soon unless the city gets serious about land assemblages in the Downtown area.

Anyway, most new Downtown projects typically include structured or underground parking for themselves, and perhaps some parking for the general public. Public parking garages can pick up some of the slack, with transit hopefully serving as the main means of moving people in and out of Downtown. But as surface parking lots are removed, parking your car Downtown will become more difficult–and that’s just fine with me. Time for a few quotes:

Anyplace worth its salt has a “parking problem.” -James Castle, public policy consultant

The car is not the enemy, nor is the elimination of cars the solution. It is our societal bias toward cars that must be questioned. – Anne Vernez Moudon, University of Washington professor of urban design

Anything you do to make a city more friendly to cars makes it less friendly to people. – Enrique Penalosa, New York University urban scholar

And finally, this from Dan Malouff, the mastermind behind BeyondDC and a friend and urban planner who I respect:

Downtowns will never be able to out-suburb the suburbs. It will never be able to play the suburban game of drive-up-and-park better than actual suburbs. Since downtown will never be able to make parking as easy as the suburbs, “easy parking” will never be the reason people choose to go downtown. Instead, people will choose to go downtown based on something downtown has that the suburbs don’t. The one thing downtown has that the suburbs don’t is quality urbanism (i.e. “walkability”). Walkability, therefore, is downtown’s primary competitive advantage over the suburbs. Since walkability suffers when land is used for parking, it stands to reason that more parking would HARM downtown Denver, because more parking would dilute downtown’s walkability, and walkability is the only reason to go downtown instead of to the suburbs. Put simply, easier downtown parking would make downtown more like the suburbs, which would be counterproductive because the reason people go downtown in the first place is because it ISN’T like the suburbs.

Nobody likes to walk next to a surface parking lot. They’re ugly and boring and they diminish the pedestrian experience. Eliminating surface parking lots gives us two bangs for our buck: we remove something that is a deterrent to walkability, and we add something that (hopefully) makes the pedestrian experience engaging and memorable.

Anyway, that’s it, folks! I hope you enjoyed the Top 10 countdown, and thanks for all the great comments—keep them coming. Here’s to a better Downtown Denver!

Filed under Blocks, Golden Triangle, Parking, Plans & Policies, Streets.
17 Comments

#2: More Two-Way Downtown Streets

Posted by Ken on February 2, 2009

Much like the number of traffic lanes discussed in #3, the fact that virtually all of Downtown Denver’s streets are one-way streets is reflective of the outdated mentality that the public right-of-way is all about moving the maximum number of cars from Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time.

Given that the 16th Street Mall is not accessible to cars, three blocks separate 15th and 18th as parallel northwest-bound streets, and three blocks separate 14th and 17th as parallel southeast-bound streets. Add in the fact that the named cross streets are also alternating one-way streets, and it is quite easy to find yourself in a situation where you may have to drive four or five blocks out of your way just to get around the corner. The superblocks created by the Colorado Convention Center and the Denver Performing Arts Complex, also bordered by one-way streets, further complicate the matter. I’m not necessarily proposing that every one-way street in Downtown be converted to two-way, but many of them could be, particularly the named streets.

Wynkoop, Wazee and Glenarm seem to function just fine as two-way streets, and I can easily envision Larimer, Lawrence, Arapahoe, Curtis, Champa, Welton, and Tremont converted to two-way streets as well. Stout and California would probably have to stay as one-ways given the presence of the light rail tracks, as well as Market and Blake given how they feed into Auraria Parkway. On the numbered streets, even just one lane in the opposite direction on 15th, 17th, 18th and 19th would be a big help in avoiding the multiple-block “loop around” due to the Mall. Finally, 14th Street would make a great two-way street. With the plan to rebuild 14th and streetscape it as Downtown’s pedestrian-friendly cultural corridor, slowing down traffic and providing two-way access along 14th would be a logical complement to the planned physical improvements.

Again, this is a situation where our Downtown infrastructure has been designed to accommodate the automobile to such a degree that street name signs don’t even appear on the “back” sides of traffic signal mast arms since, one would hope, no cars would ever be traveling the wrong way on one-way streets to see the back sides. The only problem, as you know, is that pedestrians are not restricted to walking only one way on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, here we are in 2009 and if you’re a pedestrian walking on the sidewalk in the opposite direction of traffic on a Downtown Denver one-way street, in order to know the name of the cross street you’re approaching, you still have to cross the street and then look back over your shoulder to see the street name sign. How silly is that?

It’s a well-known fact that cars travel more slowly on two-way streets; a benefit to pedestrians. And while there is a certain easiness and predictability about crossing a one-way street as a pedestrian, having to look both ways before venturing into the crosswalk on a two-way street is hardly a big deal. Cherry Creek North thrives as a pedestrian-oriented district, and all its streets are two-ways. The time has come for us to reclaim Downtown Denver’s streets and make the pedestrian the priority in Downtown. A slight inconvenience to drivers? Perhaps, but too bad. Cars rule just about everywhere else in our society, why can’t we identify a few special places where the pedestrian can rule?

Filed under Blocks, Plans & Policies, Streets, Transportation.
33 Comments

#3: Eliminate One Lane (at Least) from Every Downtown Street

Posted by Ken on January 30, 2009

Well, maybe not every Downtown street. A few streets, like Glenarm and Wazee, are already just one lane in each direction. But the majority of streets in Downtown Denver have too many lanes. They have been designed to maximize peak hour automobile traffic volumes, at the expense of pedestrians, bicyclists and transit. The number of through lanes on Downtown Denver’s streets reflects the 20th Century mentality that the public realm—the space between the buildings—belongs to the automobile and that traffic engineers should have absolute authority over what to do with that space.

Most of Downtown’s streets have three through lanes and, at many intersections, bloat to four or five when counting right or left turn lanes. Yet the vast majority of the time, these lanes are virtually empty. When walking down the 16th Street Mall, think about all the intersections where you look down the cross street and don’t see an oncoming car for blocks. Even during rush hour, cars are stacked up at a red light usually only three or four deep per lane. Remove one of those lanes, and they’d be stacked up five or six deep. So what? Yes, there are those times during rush hour or when a big event lets out when cars stack up to where they could create gridlock. But do we really need, or want, to have our Downtown streets be designed for situations that, out of the 1,440 minutes in a day, last for perhaps only twenty or thirty of those minutes? Meanwhile, the remaining 99% of the time, pedestrians are forced to suffer an infrastructure not built for them.

Now, when I say eliminate a lane, you can do that in different ways. It could mean a literal removal of the lane, where we move the curb and gutter in and expand the sidewalk on one or both sides of the street. But it could also mean converting a through lane into a parking lane, if one doesn’t exist there already, or converting a through lane into a “transit-bicycle-right turn only” lane. There are plenty of options, and which ones to do would need to be evaluated on a block-by-block basis. But those double-right and double-left turn lanes–get rid of them! They have no place in a Downtown environment. They are an insult and a physical threat to the pedestrian.

Narrowing streets and widening sidewalks is an expensive effort. In some places Downtown, it’s what we need to do and we should commit city resources to doing just that. However, we can do many relatively inexpensive things like restriping streets to add bike lanes, building bulb-outs at intersections to shorten pedestrian crossings, etc. that will help improve Downtown Denver for the pedestrian in the near-term. It will take a long time to reverse a half-century of infrastructure that’s been designed around the automobile, but we’ve got to do it if we want our Downtown to thrive beyond the 16th Street Mall.

Filed under Blocks, Plans & Policies, Streets, Transportation.
24 Comments

#7: Downtown Streetcars!

Posted by Ken on January 15, 2009

Everyone is certainly aware of FasTracks, metro Denver’s rail transit expansion program approved by voters in 2004 that will add 119 miles to our existing 35-mile rail system and position Denver as one of the nation’s leading cities in public transport. Based on a hub-and-spoke model, RTD’s post-FasTracks rail system will be well suited to shuttle passengers back and forth from Downtown Denver to the city’s outlying suburbs, DIA, and Boulder. It’s necessary, and I’m happy we’re doing it.

But, the time has come for Denver to invest in rail transit for its urban core. RTD’s post-FasTracks system will provide minimal utility to the 205,000 people who live within a three-mile radius of Downtown. Much of the RTD system runs along freight rail corridors and through industrial areas, not where Denver’s urban core population resides. Denver’s center city is well-served by bus routes, but busses can get stuck in traffic or stuck in snow, and they don’t provide the same quality transit experience that can be provided by streetcars. Because of the permanent infrastructure of streetcars versus the transiency of a bus line, streetcars can also stimulate economic development activity to a far greater degree than can bus routes. Streetcars are also more conducive to denser urban environments as they typically share a travel lane with vehicular traffic, as opposed to light rail, which typically runs in its own right-of-way. Here’s an example of a streetcar line in Portland, Oregon:

Denver once had one of the most extensive streetcar networks in the country. Denver’s system, which first started in the 1870s as horse-drawn streetcars, evolved into a fully electrified system that provided service to virtually every developed neighborhood in the city by the 1920s and 1930s. Of course, you can probably guess the rest of the story: by the 1940s we started replacing the streetcars with busses and, in June 1950, the last streetcar made its final run in Denver.

Just how extensive was Denver’s streetcar system? Using the Denver Tramway Company streetcar route map included in Robertson’s and Cafky’s tremendous Denver’s Street Railways, Volume II book (published in 2004 by Sundance Publications) as my guide, I’ve created this exhibit showing Denver’s streetcar system as it existed in 1926 (about when the system was at its peak) overlaid on top of a current Denver aerial:

Incredible, huh? Plus, what’s not shown on the map are the “inter-urban” lines that ran to Arvada and Golden.

If you look closely, you can still find evidence of Denver’s streetcar system today as, in a number of locations, the rails were simply paved over and are sometimes visible through the asphalt, like this shot I took a few years ago at 14th and Delaware (I think it’s been paved over since):

So, what we should do is begin laying the foundation for a return to a streetcar system that serves Denver’s urban core districts by creating a Downtown streetcar loop from which additional streetcar lines could eventually radiate to places like Cherry Creek, Highland, Curtis Park, South Broadway, and elsewhere. Converting the proposed Downtown Circulator, which is planned as a mall-shuttle type bus that would travel between Union Station and Civic Center via 18th, 19th, Broadway, and Lincoln, to streetcars would be a good place to start. And like in Portland, our Downtown streetcar loop, along with the 16th Street Mall shuttle—also a potential streetcar conversion opportunity—should be part of a “fareless square” that enables free transit within the Downtown core.

Debating the alignment of the streetcar loop and subsequent extensions is the fun part; getting our first starter line in place will be the challenge. I’m convinced that RTD and suburban voters will not be in the mood to fund a Denver-centric streetcar system anytime soon. Consequently, if an urban core streetcar system is something Denver citizens want, then we’re going to have to pay for it ourselves. A couple-hundred-million-dollar bond issue and a 0.1% sales tax increase would probably get us started.

Filed under Plans & Policies, Streets, Transit.
29 Comments

#9: More Trees!

Posted by Ken on January 11, 2009

We need more trees in Downtown Denver. To explain, I’m going to quote myself from a blog I did in September 2007 about Portland, Oregon’s Downtown treescape:

“Trees. They are such a critical element in a downtown streetscape, given all the concrete, asphalt, brick, and other hard and heat-radiating surfaces found in urban centers. In Denver, our Downtown treescape is in poor shape. The trees along 16th Street are generally in good condition and have grown over the past 25 years to create a relatively nice canopy along the Mall. But venture down just about any other Downtown Denver street, and you’ll find plenty of frail specimens looking all battered and abused, jagged stumps poking up from the sidewalk like broken-off toothpicks, and empty tree grates harboring weeds. Given the ubiquitous sunshine in Denver and our increasingly scorching summers, we need all the Downtown trees we can get.”

We also need to take better care of our Downtown trees. It’s very discouraging to see trees that are dead or severely stressed, but still sitting in their tree grate on the sidewalk. That would be like leaving the carcass of a dead animal on the sidewalk until its body decomposes. We would never allow that, yet we allow dead or dying trees to remain in place for years. Except for the trees on the 16th Street Mall and in parks and a few other places, the maintenance of Downtown trees are the responsibility of the owner in front of whose property the tree sits. So the next time you’re Downtown and you spot a dead tree or an empty tree grate, look at the building you’re standing in front of, and you’ll know who to blame.

How many trees are there Downtown and how do we know it’s not enough, you might ask? John D. at the Downtown Denver Partnership did a partial tree survey this past summer, and he was kind enough to share the data with me. The survey focused on just the named streets, from Cleveland Place to Larimer Street, and the blocks between 14th and 18th Streets (the 1400, 1500, 1600, and 1700 blocks). Also, two assumptions: 8 is the desired minimum number of trees per block face (or 16 trees per block), and the named streets run north-south. Using his raw data, I’ve created the following table:

What does this information tell us? Here are some key conclusions:

  • Based on the minimum standard of 8 trees per block face, the survey area in total has only about 56% of the street trees that it should have.

  • Collectively, the 1700 blocks are the best off, with about 73% of the trees they should have, followed by the 1500 blocks with 58%, the 1400 blocks with 50%, and the 1600 blocks with only 43%.

  • Curtis Street is the best off, with about 84% of the trees it should have, followed by California (76%), Larimer (72%), Arapahoe (62%), Stout (58%), Lawrence (55%) and Cleveland (50%). Having less than half the desired number of trees is Welton (44%), Tremont (41%), Court (39%), Champa (36%), and finally Glenarm, with only 30% of the minimum number of street trees.

  • Of the 88 total block faces in the study group, 27 of them (31%) were at or greater than the desired minimum. Of the remaining 61 block faces with some kind of shortfall (anywhere from 1 to 8 trees) about one-third (22) had a shortfall of 1 to 4 trees, and about two-thirds (39) had a shortfall of 5 to 8 trees.

  • A total of 26 block faces (30% of the entire survey group) don’t have a single street tree!

Keep in mind that this survey did not take into consideration the quality (i.e. health) of a tree, only if a tree was present. In fact, a few of the trees counted were noted as being dead, but were counted nevertheless.

Planting more trees is one goal, keeping every tree in a vibrant state of health is another. Our current system of relying on property owners to maintain the street trees in front of their property is obviously not working very well. We need to either vigorously enforce the current requirements, or make the maintenance of all trees in the Central Business District the responsibility of some entity that can ensure the trees are irrigated, pruned, and cared for on a regular basis. One way or another, we need a Downtown treescape that provides ample shade, shelter, and aesthetics for the pedestrian.

Filed under Public Spaces, Streets, Sustainability.
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