Colorado Planning for a Less Car-Dependent Transportation Future

“Rewrites of Colorado’s statewide 10-year priority project plan and two Front Range regional transportation plans are nearing adoption in the next month,” reports Jon Murray for the Denver Post.

“Especially in metro Denver, they shift big money from expanding pavement to other projects that make it easier, and safer, to travel on public transportation, on bike or on foot.”

The Denver Regional Council of Governments’ 2050 regional transportation plan, one of the plans up for approval this month, would speed up plans for bus rapid transit along busy arterial streets (see previous Planetizen coverage of the DRCOG’s 2020 regional transportation plan). “In the proposed update, those plans have been accelerated — with five projects now set out by 2030 along East Colfax Avenue in Denver, long in planning; a Colfax extension through Aurora; and long stretches of Federal Boulevard, Colorado Boulevard, and Colorado 119 between Boulder and Longmont. More rapid bus corridors would follow in the 2030s,” reports Murray.

Other plans include an updated 2045 regional plan by the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization, which covers a region including Fort Collins and Greeley, and an update to the state’s ten-year project plan, under consideration his week by the Colorado Transportation commission.

Murray gives credit for the shift in transportation funding priority to legislation, SB21-200, approved by the Colorado State Legislature and signed by Governor Jared Polis last year. The Colorado Transportation Commission has already adopted new greenhouse gas emissions rules enabled by that legislation.