Denver City Councilmembers pressed Amy Ford, executive director of Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, for details following a public outcry over changes to its “lane repurposing project” on East Alameda Avenue.

Councilmembers wrote Mayor Mike Johnston last week after a television news story was aired, alleging that the city had succumbed to lobbying pressure in changing its original plans to downsize Alameda’s four lanes of traffic east of South Broadway to just two lanes.

Johnston denied the charge. Ford described for councilmembers a process where DOTI had changed directions following a closer look at the specifics of previous crashes along the corridor.

The revised plan calls for a more moderate “road diet” for the 10-block stretch between South Logan and South Franklin streets, with a single westbound lane of traffic, and retaining two eastbound lanes.

But councilmembers repeatedly asked for data to verify that the modified plan would reflect greater safety.

A number of activists were prominent in the spectator area of the chambers, holding a large banner reading “Safe & Accessible, Mobility Is a Human Right” and a panoply of signs, and clicking metal clickers to underscore testimony critical of DOTI’s process.

TEMPORARY DEPLOYMENT

In answer to a query by District 6 Councilmember Paul Kashmann, Ford said that DOTI would carry out a “temporary deployment” of the revised modifications over coming months to gain more performance data.

Ford also noted in response to criticism of the change that the agency has made compromises to its plans in past cases, after presenting them to the community and receiving feedback from neighbors and drivers affected. She mentioned modifications made to DOTI’s bikeway plans for Kearney Street in near Crestmoor Park, and on West 29th Avenue, among other examples.

Councilmembers and DOTI staff referenced Vision Zero, the Swedish accident prevention program that was adopted by the city in 2016, as a reference for the department’s ongoing modifications to Denver’s road infrastructure.

Vision Zero was established specifically to reduce severe injury accidents and fatalities from auto crashes to zero, and was highly successful in European cities where it debuted.

But results have been more checkered in U.S. cities, which began adopting the program in the mid 2010s.

In response to questions on how the reexamination took place, Ford told councilmembers that DOTI looked at specific crashes for more detail on their causes. Following input from neighbors worried about traffic being forced onto side streets, DOTI took a closer look at East Virginia Avenue, a neighborhood street two blocks south along Washington Park.

While most crashes along Alameda tend to be car-to-car, Ford noted, accidents were also reported along Virginia, including ones involving bikes and pedestrians.

District 2 Councilmember Kevin Flynn questioned whether the city had taken into account a similar lane-slimming project that the department had carried out along the same stretch of Alameda in 2012.

Flynn said he had talked repeatedly with a former Denver traffic engineer who had been involved in the earlier road-diet project, who had questioned whether the slimming would result in congestion as it had before.

Flynn also complimented Ford and the agency in their process of having worked out a compromise on the Alameda modification, after receiving input from the community.

Earlier this month, The Denver Gazette spoke with Dennis Royer, who served as chief traffic engineer for the city for 15 years, before moving on to become transit chief in Boston.

“This was tried over 10 years ago and was a massive failure,” Royer said previously. “It did exactly what the neighbors are worried about now, which is rerouting traffic into the neighborhood.”

REROUTING TRAFFIC

As with the plan introduced last year, the revised plan will include a speed limit reduction from 30 miles per hour to 25 and will create protected turn lanes where drivers can make safer left turns, without feeling pressure from backed-up traffic.

The agency had originally come under fire last summer by the group Action for Alameda, which had opposed the original plans close-down from four lanes of traffic to two lanes of flow. After a compromise was announced in November, a group of West Washington Park neighbors that supported the more restrictive lane closure charged that the city, including Johnston, ignored safety considerations in the redesign, caving to pressure from the opposition.

Both groups had come to the city with petitions, with hundreds of co-signers in support of the alternate plans.

Among those opposed to the original plan was Jill Anschutz, who lives near the project site and helped to organize a petition opposing the original design. The Denver Gazette’s parent company, Clarity Media Group, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation.