Joseph York was arrested Thursday after detectives identified him as a suspect through interviews and surveillance video, the Denver Police Department said in a news release Friday.

Detectives believe York was arguing with the victim, 25-year-old Elijah Barr, before the shooting in the early hours of June 7, the Denver Police Department said in a news release Friday. The intersection is between the city’s .

Barr was found with multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

York is being held without bail in the Downtown Detention Center and is set to appear in Denver County Court on Saturday, jail records show.

Five of the complex’s six buildings in the 1200 block of Dallas in Aurora were purchased this month by the East Colfax Community Collective’s mixed-income neighborhood trust, public records show.

The collective is “focused on fighting displacement in the East Colfax area of Denver and Aurora,” according to trust director Carson Bryant. Founded in 2019, the organization began buying apartment buildings through the trust in 2024.

The collective paid $4.5 million on June 3 for the 60 units at Edge at Lowry, according to public records. The seller, an affiliate of CBZ Management, paid $6.9 million for them in 2019.

Neither deal included a sixth building within the complex, at 1208 Dallas St., which is under separate ownership and is run by a receiver.

Edge at Lowry received national attention in the summer of 2024 when CBZ went public with claims that Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang was occupying it and two of the company’s other apartment complexes in Aurora. A resident subsequentlyÌęreleased a videoÌęshowing armed men ascending a stairwell.

Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, called Aurora a “war zone” and subsequently held a rally in the city announcing plans to aggressively crack down on illegal immigrants.

The city largely blamed New York-based CBZ, which Mayor Mike Coffman called an “out-of-state slumlord.”

Aurora shut down the Edge at Lowry in February 2025, citing “an immediate threat to public safety and welfare.” In February of this year, the city settled a lawsuit it had brought against the CBZ affiliate. The settlement called for the company to pay the city $300,000 and provide security at the complex until it was either sold or rehabbed.

“This was a high-profile example of poor housing conditions gone horribly wrong,” Bryant said.

Bryant said the East Colfax Community Collective helped Edge at Lowry tenants during the national uproar, and later reached out to CBZ’s broker at Marcus & Millichap about buying it.

He said the collective made the purchase with the help of loans from the Impact Development Fund, Colorado Trust, Colorado Health Foundation, Denver Foundation and Trust Neighborhoods, a national nonprofit.

Bryant said the collective expects to spend $10 million to $12 million to renovate the complex.

“We plan to retain the original structure but basically do a down-to-stubs rehab,” Bryant said.

This is the second purchase the collective is making through its mixed-income housing trust. The first was of the 20-unit building at 1371 Xenia St. in Denver. Bryant said another deal is in the works.

“Usually we buy occupied buildings,” he said.

The collective plans to apply for low-income housing tax credits to finance the Edge at Lowry redevelopment.

“As challenging of a project as it is, it¶¶Òőap an opportunity to change this scar on the community into a thriving affordable housing community,” Bryant said.

Smith was found dead in a rolled-over car in an alley near Quince Street and East 17th Avenue in the East Colfax neighborhood. He had been shot in the head.

For three years, the case went unsolved. Then in 2023, following a “community tip,” Lakewood Police arrested Patrick Apostol, who was 45 at the time, and he was charged in the homicide.

Officers had interviewed Apostol, who lived in the area of the crash, on the day of the incident. Later, the black robe he was wearing during that conversation tested positive for gunshot residue.

Investigators later uncovered that Smith, who was 31 at the time, had been in a relationship with Apostol’s then-girlfriend, according to

“(Smith’s) murder on a September night over five years ago was a terrible tragedy, for everyone who knew him and loved him both in Denver and beyond. It was a night when the music died,” said Denver District Attorney John Walsh in .

Apostol is the half-brother of Grammy-award-winning bluegrass performer Billy Strings, whose legal name is William Lee Apostol. After made that connection public, of the article, saying he didn’t have much of a relationship with the man.

“He is my half-brother, much older. I met him when I was like 12 years old, and I went to Florida to meet my dad’s side of the family. We didn’t grow up together. I’ve probably seen him 50 times in my entire life,” he wrote.

Apostol had reportedly used his connection to Strings as part of his defense, according to the Westword article.

Apostol will be sentenced Sept. 14.

The first shooting happened Saturday night in the 4700 block of Airport Way, according to a . One person was injured and taken to the hospital, and a 36-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of first-degree assault, .

Two more people were shot early Sunday morning in the 300 block of Santa Fe Drive and took themselves to the hospital,Ìę.

Police near East Colfax Avenue and Dahlia Street just after 5 a.m. Sunday. One person was injured and later died, .

That shooting is now being investigated as a homicide, police said.

The identified the victim as 25-year-old Elijah Barr and ruled that his death from gunshot wounds was a homicide.

A fifth person was injured Sunday morning in a shooting in the 1300 block of North Speer Boulevard, according to a .

Additional information about the shootings was not available on Sunday, including the events leading up to each. Updates on the victims’ conditions were not immediately available.

Updated 1:40 p.m. June 12, 2026: This story was updated to add the name of the person who was killed in the shooting.Ìę

The community of 4,500, which is completely surrounded by Denver, is feeling squeezed by the transit-oriented proposal.

Earlier this month, Glendale’s City Council passed a resolution urging the “no-build” option for the project. The resolution states that the traffic impacts on drivers from eliminating general-purpose vehicle lanes and turning them into bus-only lanes “significantly outweigh the meager forecasted increases in bus travel times and ridership.”

A revamp of the road, which sees nearly 50,000 vehicle trips per day in Glendale, could also eliminate several left turns that provide critical access to the city for southbound traffic, said Glendale City Manager Chuck Line, including to businesses that rely on the arterial to bring them a steady flow of customers.

“It’s a lot of money for very little benefit,” Line said of the project. “You’re taking away road capacity and you’re taking away left turns. This would have a massive impact on Glendale.”

Glendale’s strong opposition joined other input voiced on the potential project this month. The Colorado Department of Transportation that drew about 300 people, according to Westword. The small city’s leaders are voicing the shared frustration of drivers who already deal with a clogged Colorado Boulevard — while transit advocates hope for a project that will reorient the thoroughfare to serve more people using public transportation.

The proposed Colorado Boulevard rapid bus line is one in an expanding number of projects of its kind in metro Denver, either in the planning stages or under construction. A stretch of Federal Boulevard is due for similar treatment to Colorado Boulevard, while between Boulder and Longmont is partially complete.

Construction on the $280 million East Colfax BRT project crossed from Denver into Aurora this month for the first time.

Bus rapid transit comes in different flavors, but at its core it’s designed to make buses run like trains. That could mean higher frequencies, dedicated lanes or preferential signalization for buses, more comfortable and technologically advanced stations, and level boarding for quicker step-ons and -offs.

CDOT, which is in charge of the Colorado Boulevard project since the arterial is a state highway, is in the early stages of , which will stretch from East 40th Avenue to East Yale Avenue. The bulk of the project would run through east Denver, with about 1 mile of the corridor located in Glendale.

CDOT’sÌęprojections say that building the most robust form of BRT on Colorado Boulevard — either by dedicating a center lane or a side lane for exclusive bus use — would shorten the projected 45-minute bus ride in 2045 by 30% to 35%. Daily bus ridership, CDOT estimates, would leap from around 2,800 today to 6,000 a day in that time.

But to achieve those improvements in transit travel times would require turning a car lane into a bus lane in each direction. And that’s where the trade-off comes in.

CDOT projects that a center-running bus lane design would come with double the vehicle travel times on Colorado Boulevard by 2045, while a side-running design would boost vehicle travel times by nearly 50%.

“They’re taking it from a three-lane road to a two-lane road (in each direction),” Line said. “You’re going to double travel time for 30,000 people on southbound Colorado Boulevard for 3,000 additional bus riders?”

Jill Locantore, executive director of the transit-friendly organization Denver Streets Partnership, said it’s time to have more than just a conversation about a famously crowded corridor on Denver’s east side.

“We’ve spent decades widening Colorado Boulevard, and that has proven to be a failed strategy,” she said. “We can’t build our way out of congestion.”

She urges CDOT to embrace an alternative that includes a dedicated bus lane — an “essential ingredient” in getting people on the bus.

“Making the bus fast, frequent and reliable — that’s how people really start using transit,” Locantore said.

CDOT appeared to be backing away from the center-running alternative already, with spokeswoman Tamara Rollison telling The Denver Post last week that the agency had concerns about “unacceptable traffic impacts, higher construction impacts and costs” from that design.

There is a third alternative, called mixed-flow traffic,Ìęwhich would keep intact the six throughlanes on Colorado Boulevard while giving buses signal prioritization for faster progress.

“But no decisions have been made,” Rollison said.

Line, Glendale’s city manager, is also worried about what a more congested Colorado Boulevard could do to the performance of intersecting streets, like East Alameda and East Mississippi avenues. And if things get too crunched on Colorado, he asked, would drivers choose neighborhood streets in both Denver and Glendale as alternate routes?

“They’re going to be driving through Virginia Village, they’re going to be driving through Hilltop,” he said of two adjacent Denver neighborhoods.

That worries Courtney Mamuscia, the president of the Hilltop Neighborhood Association, which lies just north of Glendale. She could see Holly, Dahlia and Clermont streets becoming pass-through routes for impatient motorists tired of staring at brake lights on Colorado Boulevard.

“The neighborhood is deeply skeptical (of CDOT’s plans),” she said. “Lane reductions that will divert thousands of vehicles into our neighborhood is a big concern.”

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The W was a cocktail bar and burger joint on 5001 E. Colfax Ave., in a property with a green-tiled exterior whose last tenants were Crush Wing + Tap and The Elm. Carrie and Ernest Wigglesworth and two partners opened their businessÌęin 2024 as a dining opportunity for their neighborhood that wasn’t selling pizzas but burgers, sandwiches, craft beer on tap and cocktails.

“While we hoped for a different outcome, the challenges of today’s economic and business climate have made continuing unsustainable,” the Instagram post read. “Thank you to everyone who supported us, spent time with us and helped make The W what it was. We will always be grateful for this community.”

The Wigglesworths’ last day of operation was Sunday, May 24.

Although the price tag can be lofty, diners often say they enjoy the experience of watching the chefs work their magic and being able to interact with them on a personal level. Some of these chef’s counter restaurants are so small that they share their spaces with other restaurants, making it financially feasible for them to operate.

Denver’s newest tasting-menu counter, Milpero, opened this week. It’s the product of chef Johnny Curiel, who has earned Michelin stars at two of his other restaurants, along with national recognition. Milpero follows on the heels of spots like Petit Chelou, located inside Hop Alley in River North, and Mas Chido, an upgraded experience at Molino Chido in the Stanley Marketplace.

“Everyone wants to just put everything in a shoe box. They want to know exactly what something is before they decide on it,” said chef and restaurateur Tommy Lee, who owns Hop Alley and is the co-owner of Molino Chido with chef Michael Diaz de Leon.

In paying for a lengthy tasting-menu experience, diners are turning their trust to the chef and their team, he added. “Restaurant people are the complete opposite. We want to be surprised.”

Below are four of the newest counters in Denver.

Milpero

It has only been two-and-a-half years since Johnny and Kasie Curiel opened Alma Fonda Fina in Denver’s Lower Highland neighborhood, but their empire now includes Mezcaleria Alma, Alteño, Cozobi Fonda Fina and Mar Bella Wine Bar. Two of those, Alma Fonda Fina and Mezcaleria Alma, have a Michelin star rating.

Until recently, though, Curiel didn’t have a restaurant with a chef’s table. That’s why he opened his sixth restaurant, Milpero, on Wednesday, May 13. There, he and his chefs will serve 18 of their best Mexican dishes twice a night from Wednesday to Saturday — to just eight guests at a time.

“It’s the same thing that we were doing at Alma, but in a tasting-menu format, doing it in a small and … a more intimate setting where I can have a conversation with eight guests for three hours and share as much knowledge as I can share,” he said.

Milpero (which changed its name from Maize just before opening) charges $225 for the guided experience, not including wine pairings or cocktails. The first courses are elevated seafood appetizers, such as an Otoro bluefin tuna flauta and Hokkaido sea urchin tamal. Those are followed by a look inside Milpero’s fermentation room, where a sample drink acts as a midway digestif for the spicy, spectacular hot courses served later in the night.

Hosts then seat diners at a white counter facing the kitchen, where they can see Curiel and his team prepare, plate and present dishes such as a cut of Wagyu “asada” beef with large ayocote beans and mole amarillo and California squab with charred onion jam and a fruity mole “manchamanteles,” Spanish for “tablecloth stainer.”

Six moles are served throughout the night, including for dessert. Corn, or “maiz,” is the main star and featured throughout the night in different forms.

“My life goal has never been about Johnny Johnny Johnny, Kasie Kasie Kasie,” Curiel said before Milpero’s opening. “It’s always been about Mexico. And if I continue to share Mexican food, if I continue to share my knowledge, even though it’s minimal, I think I’m contributing to what I always said from day one I would do.”

Located at 3455 Ringsby Ct. Unit 105A, Denver. Reservations are made .

Mas Chido

Michael Diaz de Leon and Tommy Lee had anticipated launching their chef’s counter, Mas Chido, in one section of their taqueria, Molino Chido, when it opened last November. But they took some extra time to dial it in.

The five-course tasting menu only operates on Fridays and Saturdays for now, and it costs significantly less than some of the other chef’s counter restaurants in town at $85 (beverage pairings are an additional $55). But the experience is still “designed to be immersive, expressive, and above all, fun,” according to the restaurant.

Diaz de Leon, who won a Michelin star while he was the chef at Bruto, is focused on corn that is milled and nixtamalized in-house. Mas Chido’s menu consists of dishes, such as Sonoran momo dumpling with tamarind birria, potato, ginger and curry leaf and a sope, or fried masa, with a red mole consisting of scarlet turnip, huckleberry, fig and other crimson-colored fruits and vegetables.

Mas Chido can bring in 10% of a day’s revenue with just a fraction of the customers, Lee said. “If you can keep it booked out and not apply tons of labor to it, then it makes a lot of sense,” he said.

There are three seatings per night, at 4, 6 and 8 p.m.

Located atÌę2501 Dallas St. Unit 140, Aurora. Reservations are made online via

Petit Chelou

When a six-seat counter and kitchen inside of Hop Alley opened up after a series of popups there, owner Tommy Lee got in touch with Douglas Rankin, a lauded chef who had recently closed his Pasadena restaurant Bar Chelou after wildfires there and was planning a move to Denver for a fresh start.

Rankin jumped at the opportunity because he wanted to get familiar with the local restaurant scene, and a chef’s counter was a perfect way to do that — and a chance to show off his style and creativity without a major investment.

Petit Chelou is a team of three: Rankin, sous chef Rebecca Balenson and sommelier Jacob Roadhouse, a recent James Beard semifinalist through his wine program at Hop Alley, which is also a Michelin-recommended restaurant. The group offers seatings twice a night, Thursdays through Saturdays, working out of a kitchen space barely big enough to contain the three of them.

“It’s kind of like living in a studio apartment,” Rankin said. “It’s really good that the three of us work together very well.”

His French, Japanese and Spanish-inspired dishes are made with the skill of someone whose long career includes working for industry luminary Jose Andres at SAAM at The Baazar in Beverly Hills, California. They include a grated potato dish with creamy soubise, bonito and 30-month Comte cheese and crispy quail with vin jaune sauce and fennel pollen furikake.

At a recent three-hour dinner at Petit Chelou, a customer celebrating a birthday brightened up when she saw the words “Happy Birthday” written on her printed menu. When another guest said she was allergic to sesame, one of the evening’s main ingredients, Rankin and Balenson prepared her a meal she could enjoy. His team’s pace was composed and never rushed.

“We always try to do our best to create an entirely new dish and something that feels like it’s on the menu,” he said.

Dining at Petit Chelou is $125 a person, while Roadhouse’s wine pairings are an additional $88 or $56 for non-alcoholic picks.

Located at 3500 Larimer St., Denver. Reservations are made online via

The Counter at Odell’s Bagel

Chef Miles Odell flips his daytime bagel shop into a nighttime 14-seat omakase restaurant — omakase is Japanese for “I’ll leave it up to you” — three times a week.

The seasonal 16-course dinner costs $175 per person (beverage pairings are an additional $85) and has recently included dishes like nigiri sushi with fish imported from Japan, along with Alaskan black cod marinated in shio koji seasoning served with fermented rice and Colorado winter spinach.

It has been so popular that Odell and his team plan to expand service from three to five nights a week.

Gigs at omakase counters in Japan and New York City inspired Odell to pursue a similar style of service in Denver. He likened cooking in front of guests and engaging with them to public speaking.

“When I first started my career, talking directly to guests in a Michelin-starred environment, I was very nervous,” he said. “The more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it. Now I really enjoy learning about people. I don’t feel nervous at all.”

Located at 3200 Irving St., Denver. Reservations are made online via OpenTable.

The for riders on Regional Transportation District buses plying one of metro Denver’s busiest roads. But for Sean Buchan, a co-owner of Cerebral Brewing, the Aurora phase could amount to a second economic body blow.

His brewery at East Colfax Avenue and Monroe Street in Denver has endured 18 months of construction, slicing 20% out of his bottom line as chain-link fencing and closed side streets have chased away customers.ÌęNow Buchan will have to face a new round of disruption at one of his other breweries at Colfax and Florence Street — four miles to the east in Aurora.

“We saw people who would no longer drive to get here,” he said of the overhaul that began in Denver in the fall of 2024, generally starting at Broadway and moving east. “We saw a drastic year-over-year reduction in business.”

One consolation for businesses along the Aurora segment of the project is that planners are employing a totally different design than what’s being used for the 5.4 miles of Colfax from Broadway to Yosemite Street in Denver. The Denver segment is closer to a full “bus rapid transit” design — with dedicated bus lanes in the center of the street. But in Aurora, buses will migrate to the sides of Colfax and join the general flow of traffic once they cross the line dividing the two cities.

Travel time for bus riders is projected to drop by 15 to 30 minutes along the corridor from what it is on the Route 15 and Route 15L buses that serve East Colfax now. The new rapid bus system, promising easier boarding and a pickup frequency of less than every five minutes, is expected to launch at the end of 2027.

“While construction on the Aurora portion of the corridor is expected to move at a quicker pace and with less disruption than work occurring in Denver, we recognize that any level of construction activity can be challenging for nearby businesses,” saidÌęShawn Albert,Ìęthe deputy project director for the East Colfax Avenue BRT project.

Albert works for Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, which is overseeing the entire effort.

“We will maintain access to all businesses during the construction, but some temporary pedestrian detours may be needed to accommodate specific construction activities,” he said.

Several businesses in the Denver section of the project have closed or moved because of the construction, including Misfit Snack Bar and Colfax and Cream, a coffee and ice cream joint.

Those who haven’t turned out the lights are on the edge, Buchan said.

“Everyone who didn’t close wasÌęwaving the white flag and asking for help,” he said.

Buchan received $15,000 from Denver’s , which he said covered about a month’s worth of payroll for his dozen or so employees. He has had to cut his staff’s working hours but hasn’t laid anyone off.

“It’s been pretty brutal,” he said.

Mixed-flow traffic, station improvements

Work on Aurora’s 3.1-mile segment of the Colfax project is set to kick off Wednesday with utility work near Havana Street, Albert said. Work will generally proceed from west to east over the life of the project, with the eastern terminus at Interstate 225, near the Anschutz Medical Campus.

More involved station work will begin this summer, Albert said. The total cost for the Aurora segment is nearly $26 million — $14 million of which comes from city funds.

Carlie Campuzano, Aurora’s deputy director of transportation and mobility, said there will be 22 stations in the city — 11 on each side of Colfax.

“There will be station improvements,” she said. “There will be a shelter added at every station.”

The stations will have ticket kiosks so that fares don’t have to be paid onboard the buses, saving time. Some of the stations will feature real-time arrival screens and level boarding, making it seamless for wheelchairs and people with disabilities to get on and off the buses.

Campuzano said that while the Aurora segment looks and works differently from the Denver segment, it meets the standards for what constitutes a bus rapid transit system.

“For BRT, there’s a menu for different strategies,” she said.

According to , the organization posited that there is no single way to design a project, saying “… flexible systems are important, especially since many BRT systems operate in dynamic urban environments.”

“While a majority of BRT (lines) … operate at least a portion of the system in some form of dedicated bus lanes (median, side, or curb-running), a majority also have a portion of the system that also operates in mixed flow, which highlights the flexibility of BRT,” the organization said.

Mixed flow is what Aurora is getting, meaning the buses will ride with the overall traffic flow on Colfax rather than in a bus-only lane. But buses will receive priority signalization at intersections — “an early green or an extended green time,” according to Campuzano — to keep them moving swiftly.

Jill Locantore, the executive director of the pro-transit , is disappointed that the design on the Denver side of the project didn’t extend into Aurora.

“I think it’s a misnomer to call it bus rapid transit in Aurora without dedicated bus lanes,” she said. “When the buses are running in mixed flow, it will not be rapid because the buses will be stuck in traffic.”

Locantore holds out hope that if BRT notably improves the transit experience on the 8.5-mile corridor over the next few years, the side lanes of East Colfax in Aurora could eventually be turned into exclusive bus lanes.

“Making it a dedicated bus lane just takes paint and signs,” she said.

The reason behind Aurora’s less-robust approach to BRT lies beyond the dynamics of East Colfax itself, said Doug Monroe, RTD’s manager of corridor planning. While the Denver stretch of the project is buttressed by alternating east-west routes to help relieve traffic on Colfax — East 13th and 14th avenues to the south and East 17th and 18th avenues to the north — Aurora’s street grid is different.

“Aurora does not have that capacity on their parallel street network,” Monroe said. “The city was concerned about impacts to traffic on Colfax.”

Up to 35 articulated buses — larger versions of a typical city bus — will move through the entire Colfax BRT corridor on any given day, Monroe said. While much of RTD’s ridership was decimated by the agency’s orders to severely restrict capacity on its buses and trains during the coronavirus pandemic, Monroe said the Colfax corridor has bounced back faster than the system as a whole in recent years.

It now has 16,000 to 17,000 daily riders, he said, compared to nearly 22,000 before the pandemic restrictions.

“Colfax is the busiest bus line in the system,” Monroe said.

Not a one-size-fits-all project

Shoshana Lew, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, is comfortable with the lack of design continuity between the Denver and Aurora segments.

“There are pros and cons to each approach,” she said in an interview with The Denver Post.

Other bus rapid transit corridors in metro Denver that are under construction, such as the , or in the planning stages, like Federal and boulevards, aren’t carbon copies of each other, Lew said.

“I think it’s phenomenal that each city is taking the lead in what it looks like,” she said. “None of these are going to be one-size-fits-all for all areas.”

Aurora’s BRT efforts come at a time when the city is making efforts to rejuvenate the Colfax corridor, which has struggled with crime and underinvestment for years. Last fall, Aurora voters approved the formation of a , which will have the power to draw on growing tax dollars in the form of tax-increment financing to invest in the corridor. The goal is to support small businesses, housing, safety and neighborhood improvements.

As the overall Colfax BRT project hit its brewery owner Buchan said he was worried about how his Aurora location would be impacted once the machines and work crews moved into place.

“I think some of the damage has been done — people see Colfax as hard to navigate,” he said.

Cerebral Brewing in Aurora, which opened in 2022 as an offshoot of the original Denver location, serves as the company’s production facility. It also has a taproom that Buchan hopes will remain a neighborhood gathering spot.

Despite being impacted twice by construction over the course of the project, Buchan says he’s a transit supporter and hopes bus rapid transit, once up and running, will inject life into the corridor and benefit the businesses that make Colfax, Colfax.

Here are some of the major projects:

West 38th Avenue

Widen sidewalks, adjust signals, and reconstruct lanes along a three-mile stretch from the South Platte River to Sheridan Boulevard to give buses priority. A city planning recommends reducing vehicle traffic lanes from five to three to make room for faster buses, pedestrians and parking. A $55 million bond-funded portion of this project would first improve bus stops, add landscaping with trees, and rebuild intersections so that pedestrians, including school children, can cross safely.

Evans Avenue

Rework a two-mile stretch between Colorado Boulevard and Quebec Street, replacing signals and installing pedestrian crossings. Other “mobility improvements” may be included in this $15 million project, city officials said, adding that they’re considering wider work on the road, where vehicle traffic lanes have been reduced to one lane in each direction between South Bryant Street and South Tejon Street.

Speer Boulevard

The project would install Bus Rapid Transit — high-frequency buses similar to trains — along a 13-mile route from Federal Boulevard to the Regional Transportation District’s Nine Mile Station near Interstate 225, transforming Speer, Leetsdale Avenue, and Parker Road. A city estimated the cost of reconstructing Speer Boulevard and Cherry Creek along a 1.5-mile stretch between Interstate 25 and Colfax Avenue at $589 million to $816 million. A $1.5 million study approved by the Denver Regional Council of Governments is scheduled for completion in 2027. Stan Kroenke, owner of the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche, has building a pedestrian bridge over Speer Ball Arena with downtown.

Eighth Avenue viaduct

Reconstruct the 90-year-old elevated road south of downtown near the likely site of the future Broncos football stadium. City describe an $89 million bond-funded project to replace the viaduct with a surface-level road, narrowing vehicle lanes to reduce speed and installing wider sidewalks, friendlier for bicyclists.

Santa Fe Drive

Following a vehicle lane reduction from three to two in 2021, a $29 million bond-funded project will install wider sidewalks and safer crossings along a seven-block stretch between Sixth Avenue and 13th Avenue through the busy Santa Fe Arts District. Protected bike lanes would be created along the 10th, 11th, 13th and 14th avenues that intersect with Santa Fe.

West Mississippi Avenue

Reduce five vehicle lanes to three along a one-mile stretch through the neighborhood between the South Platte River and Federal Boulevard. Plans for the $2.9 million project show improved pedestrian crossings and new signals to speed buses. Construction is scheduled to start this spring.

17th and 18th Avenues

RTD buses would get priority and become more reliable for riders between Broadway downtown and Colorado Boulevard. City officials are conducting a study that includes analyses of vehicle traffic, bus travel times, and parking use.

A construction schedule for bond-funded projects will be made public in April, city spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said. In addition, the is teaming with Denver on overhauls to install bus-only lanes and Bus Rapid Transit along state highways running through Denver: East Colfax Avenue (a $280 million project to be done in 2027), Federal Boulevard (a $318 million project starting in 2027), and Colorado Boulevard (still under study and design).

Denver planning documents also show more than 500 other street projects spanning the city, mostly smaller-scale neighborhood makeovers designed to force drivers to slow down and create an easier environment for people on foot and buses. These include 106 projects to install and improve bicycle lanes, 114 to improve sidewalks, 147 to adjust signals, 88 to speed transit, and 89 others promoting shared use of roads, Ìęaccording to city documents. Details, timetables, and costs aren’t clear.

It’s one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. cities to reduce space for vehicle traffic and replace it with wider sidewalks, bike lanes and dedicated bus lanes. Proponents cast the makeover as the best solution to multiple problems as traffic deaths increase and developers build high-density housing.

City transportation officials began the work a decade ago with pilot projects. They made traffic calming an official policy around 2020 and, three years later, adopted a plan. Scores of projects have been done, and the $280 million reconstruction of East Colfax Avenue with Bus Rapid Transit is scheduled for completion next year. The bulk of the projects are still in planning and design but should mostly be done by 2032.

While proponents say changes have made streets safer, critics suspect projects that reduce space for cars will only make traffic congestion worse — even after the construction disruptions end.

“They don’t want you to drive,” optician Rachelle Fresquez said as she ate lunch in the cool tranquility of her car, idling a block off West 29th Avenue, where 13 speed bumps, and white plastic posts and green-painted bicycle lanes have slowed a once-speedy route. She’s lived in Denver all her life and commutes across it to work. “It’s a mess.”

The road work creates conditions where “drivers are sitting longer in traffic, which is worse for emissions. And as you put more bicycles and pedestrians on the same roads with cars, more accidents are happening,” said Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president Matthew Groves.

Asked about the criticism, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston acknowledged the difficulty of transforming a city long oriented around cars.

“When you try to make some streets narrower, it will make traffic slower on that street,” Johnston said. “It stands to reason you can put fewer cars through a two-lane street than you can through a four-lane street.”

Among other , Seattle and San Francisco have also invested heavily in transit, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure.Ìę From New York to Los Angeles, are reengineering roads to create streets designed for more than cars. Denver officials studied efforts in San Francisco before launching pilot projects here a decade ago and, in 2020, under Mayor Michael Hancock, adopted as policy.

“The hope is you get some behavioral changes, that you will get some folks choosing to take a bus,” Johnston said.Ìę“We want to make it a city where you don’t have to rely on a car.”

Fewer car lanes, wider sidewalks, faster buses

The projects that the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, or DOTI, is planning include overhauls of The plans show vehicle lane reductions, sidewalk widening, and signal adjustments to give buses priority on West 38th Avenue, West Mississippi Avenue, Evans Avenue, and Speer Boulevard.

Larger-scale projects like the East Colfax work will install bus-only lanes and high-frequency Bus Rapid Transit along Federal and Colorado boulevards. Hundreds more smaller projects in neighborhoods across the city would alter vehicle routes.

The funding for the overall effort comes from DOTI’s $890 million annual budget, with support from the Colorado Department of Transportation and federal grants, and voter-approved $441 million in bond debt.

Fighting congestion

Denver leaders’ rationale is that without major change, , already increasing faster than in other cities, will get worse. The fear among critics is the same — that remodeling roads will worsen congestion.

“So what’s the right solution?” asked Jill Locantore, director of the Denver Streets Partnership, one of several advocacy groups pressing city leaders to carry out planned projects quickly.

“Overwhelming inertia” has prevented Denver from moving people more efficiently, Locantore said. “The status quo is our biggest problem. …. When street space is rebalanced, many people will choose other ways of getting around, travel at different times of day, combine multiple trips into one, or simply take fewer discretionary trips.”

But in areas such as Washington Park, the density of schools, shops, and high-rise apartments guarantees heavy vehicle traffic, and reducing lanes is a recipe for “traffic jams, more than we already have,” said Christophe Goudy, co-owner of along Alameda, who commutes for up to an hour from his home near Parker.

“Making it safer? That’s another thing. Before we opened, we had a car crash through the window. Shrinking the road isn’t going to make it safer. If we had a police car parked there by the school, that would decrease the speed.”

While Denver business owners generally like the idea of increased options for moving around the city using bicycles and buses, any road changes must preserve the ability of residents — including “a vast amount of our customers” — to drive their vehicles and park, said J.J. Ament, president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

“We need the city to focus on the mobility choices that people will actually use, not just what they say they want. In too many cases, DOTI has made changes proposed by a small minority of vocal interest groups that don’t represent the bulk of how people use our transit system,” Ament said.

“We need to align urban planning with human experience.”

But narrowing Santa Fe Drive from three lanes to two through a popular arts district south of downtown proved “absolutely transformative” and “we can’t wait” for sidewalk widening and protected bike lanes, said Nolan Hahn, president of the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, who rides e-bikes instead of driving. “The way we’ve built our cities — until now — is coercive.”

Denver streamlined

Denver residents from the 1890s to the 1920s relied on an extensive . Since the 1940s, Denver leaders have built and maintained roads to facilitate car-first mobility, according to the plan that city officials commissioned and adopted as a blueprint for change.

The city spans 100 square miles (excluding the 53-square-mile Denver International Airport), and 22 square miles of the area are road lanes, compared with 12 square miles of parking, five square miles of sidewalks, one square mile of bicycle-only lanes, and less than one square mile of bus-only lanes, the plan says.

The makeover eventually will give buses priority along 600 miles of lanes overall — 10 times the transit-priority miles today, city spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said.

DOTI officials decide timetables, targeting high-accident areas and historically neglected neighborhoods, according to the plan. A 2024 DOTI based on the extent to which they promote walking, biking and using buses and trains — and limits projects to expand capacity for cars.

When Denver reduced vehicle lanes and installed bus-only lanes in 2017 along Broadway and Lincoln Street south of downtown, the average travel time on RTD buses between downtown and Englewood decreased by three minutes, said Jaime Lewis, a former RTD director who also has served on Denver’s transportation advisory board. City officials didn’t say what the impact has been on travel times for people driving cars.

But Groves, the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president, estimated his work commute from south Denver up Broadway has increased by six minutes.

“Why are we spending all this money? Drivers on Broadway cut through side streets where people live, and they’re frustrated, so they’re going too fast,” Groves said. He had heard “great promises” from city officials about liberating new options for moving around and seen the passionate advocacy by young urban activists. “They are choking off our streets.”

The overall amount of driving in metro Denver has reached a record-high level, exceeding 85 million miles a day, according to transportation analysts at the Denver Regional Council of Governments. They project a 43% increase in by 2050. However, DRCOG’s noted that the amount of driving per person – about 25.7 miles a day in 2019 – has decreased to 24.8 miles a day.

Meanwhile, Denver traffic fatalities hit a record high of 93 in 2025, up 16% over the 80 in 2024, and nearly double the 49 in 2017, police data shows. The deaths in 2025 included 35 pedestrians.

DOTI director Amy Ford said investments in the road projects are already showing results, such as increased bicycle ridership in areas where protected bike lanes were installed.

“Our goal is to reduce single-occupant vehicle trips, to encourage transportation mode shifts, and to ensure that people still can move around our city,” she said.

The alternative of increasing road capacity won’t work because housing and commercial development along roads prevents widening, Ford added. “There is simply no more room. It would be cost-prohibitive to do that.”

Friction

As projects advance into public input meetings, residents and business owners often object, challenging final plans. City officials didn’t cite any project where opposition forced cancellation. However, a six-month tussle over a proposed lane drew in scores of neighborhood activists, leading to a compromise to be tested this year as a pilot project.

“Everybody got their knickers in a twist,” longtime resident Biddie Labrot said, walking her dog recently just north of Alameda. She’s skeptical that the compromise switching from a full lane reduction to a partial lane reduction with “turn pockets” will improve conditions because “when you change the pattern, you cause problems,” Labrot said. “We’re going to have a lot of head-ons.” When traffic on Alameda and Downing gets too crazy, cutting onto slower side streets “is your option,” she said. “I started doing that because it was prettier and my blood pressure didn’t go up.”

Sharing roads with new users creates challenges.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Laurie Heiken said after navigating the curves and protected bicycling lanes along East Yale Avenue. “Bike riders should stay on the bike paths we have.”

Behind the counter in Taqueria Mi Pueblo at the corner of Federal and West 29th, co-owner Jesus Tarin noted that, before a bike lane was installed, “we had parking on the street. It was good for our customers,” he said. “I don’t like the bicyclists riding on the street.”

The friction reflects a hard truth that metro Denver residents widely prefer driving to moving around by walking, bicycling or riding buses and trains, said economist Randal O’Toole, director of the at the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank in Denver.

“Cars get you from where you are to where you want to go in the shortest time possible, and it is actually pretty cheap. Transit does not get you from where you are to where you want to go,” O’Toole said.

Just as two decades of densification by building apartments has failed to make Denver housing more affordable (O’Toole argues that replacing single-family homes reduced the supply of housing people prefer), shrinking vehicle traffic space to promote bicycling and transit also will fail, O’Toole said. “It just doesn’t work. It is happening nationwide. It hasn’t worked anywhere else. It is not going to work in Denver.”

Traffic calming in and Ìę has proved popular in neighborhoods. San Francisco officials have been struggling to work through backlogs of proposals to install more speed bumps, raised crosswalks, and concrete islands to improve safety. However, the overall impact on citywide vehicle traffic congestion remains a challenge. Both San Francisco and Seattle struggle with severe congestion that ranks among the worst in the nation.

Johnston said balance will be the key to success in Denver, maintaining smooth flows for the cars “in our blood” while giving new options so that people in Denver “can have a great time and make great time.”

When conflicts arise, “both sides have strong convictions,” and tradeoffs must be made. “No one stakeholder can get everything they want,” Johnston said.

The road remodeling will be done in a way that lets residents choose whether to switch from cars to buses — “not because they feel they are forced to do it,” he said.

“Every incremental trip people don’t have to use the car for does reduce traffic congestion,” Johnston said. “We are trying to build transit hubs around the city that will have density. … We want toÌę have a street system that supports them.”

Drivers look ahead

In west Denver, Alejandra Castañeda said she strongly supports traffic-calming and wishes she could rely more on buses to avoid the hassles of driving. Work demands and moving around with her daughter forced her to purchase, reluctantly, a used orange electric Fiat, she said. Reducing road space for cars “isn’t about slowing us down, inconveniencing us. It’s about encouraging safe speeds. Too many people have been killed. We just need the city to help drivers, including me, do the safe thing.”

While Stacey Walker’s roommate hates the West 29th Avenue speed bumps and diverts to 26th, Walker accepts the reconstructed route as “a good reminder,” he said. “You can’t blow through here at 45 miles per hour anymore.”

American Automobile Association lobbyist Skyler McKinley still hails the car as “the single greatest invention for economic mobility of all time.” He relies on driving to manage a tavern he purchased 156 miles from Denver. “The car is a foundational technology in American life and will remain so,” McKinley said recently, standing on the corner of 14th Avenue and Franklin Street, on his way to the state Capitol.

He observed that nearly every vehicle whizzing past him carried one person.

“We know that adding lanes for vehicles won’t reduce traffic congestion because of induced demand (the concept that expanding urban road capacity encourages more driving). The question is whether removing space for cars increases traffic and congestion. In the near term? Yes, no question about it. But other modes of transportation may move more people more efficiently,” McKinley said.

“By removing lanes, you increase options. If the goal of the transportation system is to move people, is the car the most efficient tool within a city? The jury is out on whether Denver’s choice will be the right choice in the long run. We won’t know until they do it.”