Denver is inconvenient, unsafe annoying, slow and for cyclists
When I came to Denver to work at The Denver Post for eight weeks, I had to make a choice: Get a rental car for roughly $1,000 a month or ride the bike my roommate offered me — for free. I was a little puzzled when he said he wouldn’t use it on weekdays, anyways.
And when he gave me his helmet without even asking if I needed it.
By now, I understand. Denver is often featured on the top slots when it comes to rank “The Top 50 Best Bike Cities” in the U.S.: “Bicycling” magazine, for instance, puts it in 11th place. The real estate company Redfin rated Downtown Denver to be fourth most bikeable a year ago, claiming that its clients moved, “in part, for its bikeability.” On its own website, the City of Denver praises itself as “a paradise for cyclists.”
I think it is not. After one month of commuting, I think that Denver is at the very best an OK city to bike in. Biking here feels uncomfortable, annoying even. It can be slow and sometimes downright unsafe.
I live in the Highlands District. The Post’s offices are on Colfax Ave., close to Civic Center. To get there on my first day of work, I took the Highland Bridge, as suggested by the official “Denver Bike Map,” only to find that I had to dismount my bike and take the stairs to get over the railroad tracks. Rookie mistake, I thought.
The second day, I sprinted down Speer Blvd. That clearly was an Eclipse kind of experience, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
The third day, I tried to access the Cherry Creek Trail and simply could not find it. It took me almost two weeks to figure out
that I have to cross the REI parking lot and a construction site at the South Platte River bank to get there. Or to literally jump — yeah, jump! — on the sidewalk and bike through Confluence Park.
That day, I ended up taking a ramp on Wynkoop St., but on the wrong — also known as the pedestrian — side of Cherry Creek, and got barked at by a runner with two dogs, who stood in my way and wouldn’t let me pass until I apologized.
I bike almost year-round back home in Munich, Germany, the self-proclaimed “Radlhauptstadt,” “capital of biking.” That is clearly a marketing gag; Munich is in no ways comparable to Copenhagen or Amsterdam, not even to bike-friendly German cities like Münster. But still: Munich has built a network with more than 745 miles of bike facilities. And biking is considered a serious option when it comes to mobility; it accounts for 17 percent of all traffic.
Denver is far away from that with its more than 150 miles of on-street bike lanes and more than 100 miles of paved trails. Citywide, 2.2 percent of all commutes are done by bike (downtown: 6.6 percent). Bicycle commuting has not been increasing over the past few years, although the Public Works installs an additional 15 miles of bike lanes a year, investing about $2.5 million in bike infrastructure a year.
To be fair: I really enjoy riding on bike lanes to stroll through neighborhoods. I also fell in love with the Cherry Creek Trail when I followed it downstream at sunset after a hot summer’s day. But that doesn’t make Denver any more efficient when it comes to commuting.
And that is what really matters with 1,000 people moving to Denver every month. Traffic is already a mess, and is expected to worsen.
Mayor Michael Hancock has drafted an ambitious “Mobility Action Plan” to address the issue. He wants to invest more than $2 billion in the coming 12 years “to make it safer and easier to get where we need to go.” The major goals: reduce single-occupant vehicle commuters from 73 percent to 50 percent by 2030; increase the percentage of transit commuters to 15 percent; and raise the bike or pedestrian commuters to 15 percent as well.
The city focuses on a multimodal approach, which is good. And there seems to be a political will to increase bike traffic. It is documented in the $937 million general obligation bond the City Council plans to present to voters in November that would build bicycle infrastructure with over $30 million.
But is that enough? At the current level of investment, it will take the city until 2042 to build a full bike network, according to Denver’s Urban Mobility Manager Emily Snyder. And here is another truth Hancock needs to be honest about: Becoming more bike-friendly also means becoming less car-friendly. Drivers complain about losing lanes for their pickup trucks? Well, guess what: This is only the beginning.
Denver today is a very Western city, built for cars; it lacks any sense of bike culture. Let me illustrate that by getting back to my daily commute and the question: Why is it so complicated to reach downtown?
The fastest way to The Post I know of so far means breaking one or two traffic rules, and it is still not satisfying. I’d have to get off the Cherry Creek Trail on Colfax, pass the Fire Department on the sidewalk, take a threeblock detour over Welton St. and use another sidewalk in front of a municipal office building — a sidewalk that I am actually allowed to use, although it features a bus stop.
Getting to work by bike in Munich is so much easier. For me, it means using bike lanes from my apartment directly to the office, a 25- to 30-minute ride.
That doesn’t mean there are no conflicts. After years of debate, Munich City Hall failed to push through a bike lane on one of the busiest and most dangerous arterial roads, causing outrage in the bike community. A colleague in Munich called the city “Radlprovinzstadt”, “province bike city”.
When you speak to officials or activists on bike issues in Denver, they will tell you more or less the same thing: Denver is heading in the right direction, it has been improving over the past couple of years, but there is a long, long way to go. Or, as James Waddell, the executive director of the advocacy group Bike Denver, put it: “Denver does a good job in comparing Denver to Denver.”
Take the recently installed protected bike lane on 14th St., a facility officials are proud of. And what an improvement that is! The concrete curbs truly enhance my feeling of security. But the bike lane also feels like the exact opposite of an attractive bike lane for commuters, as traffic light settings have apparently been designed to scare you off as a cyclist. When I take that lane, I have to stop at least four to five times on an 11-block stretch, as the minutes pass. And pass. And pass.
Waiting for yet another red light to turn green, I thought: Hey, why can’t I just also have green when pedestrians have — like in Munich? Why are cars allowed to turn right on a red light, why don’t they just allow me to cross the street instead? Then I ran the stoplight.
It felt like I had no choice. If you want more people to hop on their bikes, and again, that is a necessity considering the traffic problems Denver is and will be facing, you have to offer safe and convenient solutions. Painting some lines and throwing some curbs on the streets is not enough. Recreational bikers who might want to test cycling to work need to see a real advantage in doing so, an advantage beyond breathing fresh air, working out and doing their part to reduce emissions.
Time-saving can be a huge factor in this calculation, but it certainly is not yet. With the one-way street system in downtown, I have to sometimes ride four blocks to use an adequate bike lane direction east when I need to go east right now. There is no reasonable north-south option, no lane that takes me from Civic Center to Coors Field.
Even the fastest, most scenic, best-protected bike lane is completely useless when it does not connect to other bike lanes or to the place I need to go. And I think this might be the biggest problem with biking in Denver.
Many bike lanes appear to have been randomly built around the inner city. They start somewhere, they end somewhere. Do they make sense at all? I couldn’t tell. Take the “Denver Moves Broadway/lincoln Transit Study” that features a two-way bike lane over an area of six blocks on South Broadway. It does not connect to downtown or even the Cherry Creek Trail. Testing it reminded me of the worst case: bike lanes that drop you onto a high-traffic, three- to four-lane boulevard from one moment to the other. “People are scared of biking in Denver,” an activist told me. I agree.
That brings us back to safety. And the 15th St. I use to go home every night. It starts as a protected bike lane on the left side of the road, transforms into a lane for turning vehicles first, then vanishes and leaves you alone with the challenge to cross two car lanes to continue on a shared lane in a downhill section with dozens of potholes on an uneven road.
I like challenges — when I mountain bike. Not on my way home.