Deaths raise alarm
After a deadly month, Denver cyclists will swarm the streets
Alexis Bounds, 37, was excited to get back on two wheels. It had been nine months since the birth of her second son, and she was finally ready to get out and explore Denver by bicycle.
She wasn’t far from her home near Washington Park when the crash happened. She was riding in the bike lane on South Marion Street Parkway when a dump-truck driver took a sudden turn, crossing into the bike lane and striking her just before 4 p.m. Wednesday, according to a police report.
She was declared dead at Denver Health at 5:31 p.m.
“You know, the sad thing is, she was just picking it up again. … This was her first ride on that bike,” said her husband of 12 years, Teddy Bounds, in an interview Monday. “She just went for a ride around Wash Park.”
Alexis Bounds, a health care project manager, was the fourth bicyclist killed on the Front Range this month and the second in Denver. The driver in her crash, David Anton of Rapid Material Transport, was cited for careless driving resulting in death.
The deaths have galvanized cyclists, who are planning a week of protest and mourning. White “ghost bikes” will stand watch over crash sites. “Stop killing us,” read a message scrawled on the pave
ment. A GoFundMe fundraiser for Bounds’ family has raised $12,000. News anchor Kyle Clark has drilled into opponents of bike lanes with viral precision.
And bicyclists will swarm the street in two separate rides this week, including a return of Critical Mass, a controversial and unsanctioned protest not seen in Denver for years.
“This really does feel like a poignant period in time. If you’re someone who bikes and you’re on social media, you’re definitely noticing,” said Piep van Heuven, policy director at Bicycle Colorado. “This spate of deaths — preventable deaths — in a short period of time, it does feel remarkable. It does create a sense of urgency. You can’t help but feel it.”
On Wednesday, Denver Cruiser Ride, an event that regularly draws hundreds, will honor Bounds and Scott Hendrickson, who died after a July 12 crash. Hendrickson, 62, died after a collision with a minivan in south Denver.
The cause of that crash remains under investigation.
“I know how busted up I am. Scott would have loved that we’re having a party for him, in his honor,” said Brad Evans, the event’s organizer and a friend of Hendrickson. Denver Cruiser Ride will depart from The Ginn Mill at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Later in the week, riders will converge for Critical Mass — historically, an improvised gathering of cyclists that roves city streets without a permit.
Participants will be riding about 4 miles, starting at Denver Skate Park around 7 p.m.
“I think there’s something powerful about a bunch of bikes taking over the streets. But it can also be kind of cathartic,” said organizer Jonathan Fertig. “It was the safest I’d ever felt riding a bike. People who don’t necessarily feel comfortable riding, all of a sudden when they have 50 or 100 people, they’re not looking over their shoulders.”
The recent deaths continue a terrible pattern. In 2018, Denver counted six bicyclist deaths and 18 pedestrian deaths, the highest numbers since 2013. Nearly 100 more cyclists and pedestrians were seriously injured last year; city officials also have seen a spike in automobile passenger and driver deaths.
The crashes come as Denver’s growing population have increased traffic, but also as bicycling gains in popularity.
The share of people biking to downtown jobs doubled to about 8 percent between 2013 and 2017, according to Downtown Denver Partnership surveys. Pedestrians and cyclists both make up a disproportionate share of traffic deaths.
Outside of Denver, bicyclist Patrick Calvert died after being struck by a driver in Longmont, and Edward “Chuck” Vogel was killed by an alleged hit-and-run driver in Parker, both in July.
Gary Suydam, who was paralyzed in a bike crash in Lakewood in 2017, has watched the recent crashes with concern.
“I hope the increased media scrutiny does signal a turning point. Physically separate bike lanes for now help keep bikes safe, but I think the real difference comes from a cultural change. We know that takes time,” he wrote in an email to The Denver Post.
Online, discussion of the deaths has grown heated. Cyclists have faced the complaints against them — that they’re rule-breakers, that they’ve taken the risk upon themselves. But they frame bicycling infrastructure as a life-and-death matter that will open the doors for a more sustainable city.
Arleigh Greenwald, owner of Bike Shop Girl, a cycle shop, said Denver needs to move quickly to become the “bike-friendly city” that is idealized in advertisements.
Her dedicated customers and friends are outraged, she said.
City officials have been feeling the pressure for years, and they insist big changes are coming.
Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration is spending about $7 million this year on new bike infrastructure, multiplying the commitment of previous years.
The city also has set aside $18 million from the 2017 bonds for bike infrastructure.
Eulois Cleckley, the recently appointed director of Denver Public Works, is a regular bike commuter.
“We’ve heard from the community, we’ve seen it in numbers, and we feel it,” he said on Monday. “We want to make sure that we set aside space, and we have streets designed in a manner to move everyone safely.”
Van Heuven said the plans in the works will “dynamically change the landscape in the next two years,” she said. “But it’s not on the street yet.”
At home in Washington Park West, Teddy Bounds still is sorting through an awful loss.
He’ll remember his life partner, whom he first met at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, as an “outgoing, friendly, caring person.”
She had made fast friends since they moved to Denver in 2017 from the San Francisco Bay Area.
She was preternaturally organized and naturally social, he said, while being “the best mother imaginable” to Lincoln, 4, and baby Oliver. She loved painting, and she’d taken up pottery.
“She’s a beautiful person. So positive, so outgoing,” he said. He wasn’t ready to talk about the specifics of her crash, but he urged on mobility advocates. “The more that we can do to make this city more bike friendly,” he said, “I think we should pursue this.”