denver announces ambitious bike lane building effort

Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure has announced plans to build up to 125 miles of new bike lanes in various parts of the city over the next three years.

Those lanes will take on a variety of forms, from being more defined spaces where bike lanes already exist, to entirely new lanes on roads without them.

Funding for the entirety of the initiative is unclear, but at least 50 miles of the new infrastructure will be paid out of $18 million in Elevate Denver Bond Program.

The project will include new signage and striping in an effort to create what the DOT calls “high comfort facilities” for bike riders, separating them as much as possible from vehicular traffic.

In some parts of the city, the effort will also include the building of cement embankments between the bike and car lanes.

In a statement released by the city’s Department of Transportation & Infrastructure, an emphasis was placed on streets with “lower speeds and traffic volumes” that will be designed to “make riding a bike a comfortable option for all ages and abilities.”

The bike lane initiative is one of the first projects to be sponsored by Transportation & Infrastructure Department, which was created last year, moving bike and transit issues out of the city’s Department of Public Works.

According to a recent Downtown Denver Partnership survey, the number of people riding bikes to jobs in the downtown area has increased from around 4 percent seven years ago to 8 percent in 2017.
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At the same time, the Denver metro area saw the death of six bicyclists in 2018 from accidents with vehicles, and another four last year. 

By Garry Boulard

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