Itap no secret to most Denver commuters that getting around town often isn’t hassle-free. And when commuting requires relying on public transit — despite significant investments in buses, light rail and commuter rail — the experience can be a tremendous chore in many places in this quickly growing city.
So we read with marked interest Denver Post reporter about a range of ideas for filling in those gaps in transit service that city officials have before them. With thousands moving to Denver and the metro area every year, city planners will be increasingly responsible for dealing with transportation and transit challenges for years to come.
Already the strain is obvious. As Murray notes, transit options are sparse and impractical in pockets of the city. East Denver and Cherry Creek residents have been frustrated with access to downtown and Union Station. The commuting needs in Cherry Creek represent the greater problem: Both well-paid professionals and low-wage workers are hobbled by poor transit coverage and lack of a transit hub.
Across the city riders wish for more frequent service on lines organized around a logical grid instead of the current focus on moving toward downtown.
This summer Denver officials launched a community discussion meant to form a citywide transit plan, and thatap good news. But where to go from here won’t be simple.
Options include big-ticket approaches like empowering Denver to create its own transit authority that would work in concert with the Regional Transportation District that already oversees existing transit options. Such an approach doesn’t appear to be the desire in City Hall, and for understandable reasons. New taxes would likely need to be collected to sustain a new arm of government, and Denver’s been to the ballot asking for more fairly often in the last several years. There would also be concerns about losing momentum and focus on other civic priorities while creating another bureaucracy to supplement RTD’s service.
Another option that Murray notes can be found in Boulder, where the city and the University of Colorado pay for additional bus service from RTD for branded lines.
And why rush to old-school transit-authority solutions when the city can look to the kinds of technological advances emerging and already in the works, such as ride-share partnerships? It is even possible, if Tesla doesn’t spoil the experiment, that fleets of autonomous ride-share vehicles could someday fill significant gaps with little extra infrastructure.
Meanwhile, we urge Denver planners to remember that the great majority of residents rely on cars to get about, and those commuters are too often stuck in traffic wondering what the city is doing for them. The recently upgraded commitment to bicycle lanes and rethinking use of the 16th Street Mall certainly fits as a piece of the overall equation. But a geographically large city at altitude must remember that most commuters get where they’re going in personal vehicles.
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