The narrowing (rehumanizing) of Larimer Street between 15th and 17th continues.
There’s just something about watching concrete get poured and leveled that I find quite appealing.
Archive of posts filed under the Streets category.
Bidirectional Bike Lanes
I just returned from a long holiday weekend in Montreal. It was my first time to that city and it was awesome. Montreal is nicely urban and dense with a great metro system, but it also felt very approachable and non-intimidating. Anyway, as is always the case, I come back from a trip like this with a ton of photos and examples to share of what other cities are doing that we could do here in Denver to improve our urban environment.
For our first example, let’s talk about bidirectional on-street bike lanes. In Denver, our major off-street bike trails, like along Cherry Creek or the Platte River, are bidirectional, but do we have anything in Denver like these examples below from Montreal?
Without curbs:
With curbs:
The street in Montreal without curbs was a local residential street with very little traffic. The street with curbs was a bit more of a major neighborhood street, something similar to, say, E. 11th Avenue in Capitol Hill.
I saw many examples of this in Montreal; in fact, I think I saw more bidirectional on-street bike lanes than unidirectional lanes. They appear to treat bicycles as a true transportation mode worthy of its own system within the public right-of-way rather than as something you accommodate if there’s enough room on the street to paint a few lines without inconveniencing the motor vehicle system too much.
The Downtown Denver Partnership has recently asked the city to study the possibility of a bidirectional bike lane system on 15th Street in Downtown to connect Civic Center with LoDo. Where else do you think Denver should or could implement bidirectional bike lanes? What routes would bike commuters suggest? Where do you think the right-of-way width/configuration would allow for bidirectional lanes? Discuss.
By the way, the city is currently updating its bicycle and pedestrian master plans through an effort called Denver Moves. If you are interested in this issue and want to provide feedback to the city on this important topic, please get involved in Denver Moves. For more info, visit: http://denvermoves.org/
July 2010 – Downtown Street Reconstruction
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:
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.
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:
Here’s a photo of the corner I took this morning:
There are more infrastructure improvements planned for the Downtown area coming up… topics for future blogs.
Wewatta Tail Tracks are History
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.
16th Street Mall Urban Design Plan – Public Meeting TONITE!
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)
Denver Living Streets
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.
