Denver City Council Transportation Committee Meeting on Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School - March 13, 2026
Denver City Council Transportation Committee Meeting on Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School - March 13, 2026
The Transportation Committee of the Denver City Council met on March 13, 2026, at 7:45 PM to discuss the city's Vision Zero program, Safe Routes to School initiatives, and traffic safety concerns. DOTI staff presented data on fatal and serious injury crashes, speed management, and infrastructure projects. Council members raised questions about specific corridors, crosswalks, speed cameras, and the need for improved communication between departments.
Discussion Items
- Vision Zero Data and Trends: Staff presented slides showing crash statistics by mode, roadway type, and location. Councilmember Hines noted that the Vision Zero slide text should emphasize that system design can prevent mistakes from causing injuries, not just that crashes are predictable. He also suggested using "pedestrians" instead of "people walking" to include wheelchair users.
- Speed Management and Automated Speed Cameras: Staff explained that speed cameras target excessive speeders (11+ mph over limit) and have proven crash reduction factors of 45-50%, with some cities seeing 70% speed reductions. Councilmember Flynn argued that lowering speed limits does not always reduce speeds, citing examples where raising limits on highways actually lowered average speeds. Staff noted they are lowering speed limits on Alameda in the favorite area.
- Safe Routes to School Program: Staff reported the 2026 budget is $3.67 million ($2 million from city sources, $1.1 million from state grants, plus $1.6 million added by council). Councilmember Cashman called this woefully inadequate compared to the need, which is in the hundreds of millions. Councilmember Cashman also questioned the prioritization of a $70 million soccer stadium over safety funding.
- Specific Corridor and Intersection Concerns: Councilmember Flynn requested a crosswalk beacon at Sabin Elementary on Dartmouth and a crossing at Yates and Jewell near Dennison Montessori. Councilmember Sandoval noted that a protected bikeway on 41st Avenue has pushed traffic onto 32nd and 26th Avenues, which have schools and Sloan's Lake, and asked for analysis of such impacts. She also requested that the fire department be included in crash investigations, as their perspective differs from police.
- Funding and Project Delays: Councilmember Sandoval highlighted that beacons funded in the 2021 bond have not been installed after five years, and staff cited resource constraints and re-analysis. Councilmember Romero Campbell noted that a beacon on the Highline Canal at Yale has gone out to bid multiple times without a vendor, while Arapahoe County installed a similar beacon on the same trail much faster.
- Scooters and e-Motos: Councilmember Romero Campbell raised concerns about high-speed scooters and e-bikes on sidewalks, trails, and parks, and asked for a policy or study. Staff noted a new class of vehicles called eMotos are becoming popular.
- Fatal Crash Reports: Councilmember (likely from district 10) asked about rapid response reports for fatal crashes. Staff said they can provide summary reports, but noted delays due to hit-and-run investigations and DPD evidence timelines. The councilmember had been waiting for a 2023 report on Santa Fe and Mississippi.
Key Outcomes
- Staff committed to providing a list of crosswalk beacons in design, including the 15 locations, and to follow up on specific requests from councilmembers (e.g., Sabin Elementary, Yates and Jewell, Lowell Avenue).
- Staff agreed to include Denver Fire in future rapid response investigations, as requested by Councilmember Sandoval.
- Staff will provide a breakdown of fatal crashes by mode, including the "other" category for 2025 (two incidents: one at DIA involving load vehicles, one involving an ATV with a snowplow).
- Staff will supply a per-capita fatality rate chart, as requested by Councilmember Cashman.
- Councilmember Hines offered to help DOTI achieve a 50% reduction in Vision Zero fatalities by end of 2026, noting that current trends are moving in the wrong direction.
- The committee agreed to schedule a follow-up meeting with more time to discuss safety issues in depth.
Meeting Transcript
Yeah, I just see some incongruency there. Um I do worry. I did the celebrity cross guard at Valverde two years ago, and a lot of the people are walking and finding their way across, but um it is still very scary for them, and so I don't know how that them doing that makes them safer, um, I guess is where I'm confused, and so uh it seems like there's a more need for infrastructure than necessarily mode shift that and I don't know what the strategy is to get the mode shift. There's also ways that you can think about encouraging and educating and thinking about um alternative modes of training. So carpool is always an option. Um I like to think about the concept of park a grade away. So as child, you know, if you must drive to school, um, you can park one block away for your first grade or two blocks away for your second, and so on and so forth. That'll be your kind of um decoupling some of the um challenges that occur when you know you have a hundred families all trying to access one parcel of land um at a 15 minute window, both in the morning and the afternoon. Um, there are ways that you can kind of disperse some of that tension that we can think about that don't always necessarily mean that uh you have to travel across to you know major roadway or high injury network roadway or core far co-core focus of the SIF routes to schools program is infrastructure safety so that you can facilitate people walking and biking as well as driving to the schools, so it's safe movement management and much of what which much of what John was talking about were those improvements on how we do that lights, sidewalks, crossings, etc. And um, and then education. Okay, that's helpful to know. Um if speed seems to be such a problem, why are we not aggressively lowering speeds on the high injury corridors? So we've got a combination of things, and we're all feel free to to to add into this. So uh we are in in many, so as you know, citywide we've lowered speed limits uh to 20 on all neighborhood streets, other than those what we call collectors or arterials. Those collectors and arterials we also collaborate with in many cases, as you're aware, they are also state highways, and so we collaborate with our partners at CDOT and others, you know, and how we can make requests to think about how we lower down speed limits. You have speed limits in a space that is about safe speeds and the travel of safe speeds. As you know, we do speed studies on what is the average speed in those corridors and then how you appropriately set the speeds there, and then how you monitor and let people know when they are speeding, which is why you have reflective speed signs and others. And so uh those are things that we are exploring, and uh, I don't know if we have instances of HI high injury networks where we actually uh Alameda is an upcoming example where we will be lowering the speed limit along Alameda in our favorite area where we've been talking about for the last you know few months. Um so that speed will be coming down in that particular corridor. And um and actually uh you probably could list some others where we've been doing it. We have a few others that we can provide you that list, and particularly we're very much interested in those excessive speeders doing 10 or more mile an hour over the posted speed limit and bringing those down. Um but yeah, we can get you a uh a list of I might add just real quickly on this question of automated speed cameras, which is always this delicate balance of how we think about it and the impacts of community and where we go and what it is in a crash reduction factor. And it as you know the state carefully crafted legislation to allow it. Um it is for excessive speeders, so it's basically 11 and over for those excessive speeders. Um you have these proven crash reduction factors when it comes to speed, and there's a pretty significant factor of you know upwards of 45 to 50 percent. You see some dramatic impact in cities and others. We've been following San Francisco's recently as they've been just implementing theirs. You're seeing speed reductions in these corridors by upwards of 70 percent. I mean, it's been very high. Why do we care about speed? I mean, you use the example of let's say a federal, and just happened we had a young man who was crossing on a uh on a scooter and crossed federal and was hit and killed. Um similarly when uh with 38th and Tejon, um, speed was a factor potentially in both of those, and let's say that there is a mistake that is made and how people are traveling as we're as they go. The speed does not allow you the chance to respond to a mistake. And that that is why we care so much about speed, because it reduces the human factor for us to be able to respond to adapt to something that maybe is happening in the corridor that that we could otherwise prevent. And that's why we care. That's why we care as much as we do about speed, and um and that's why one of the reasons that we'll be focusing again on these automated speed cameras too, and we are seeing we just nationally and otherwise, we are seeing the effect of those and what it does to have people start caring about how they drive in the behavior and about how it cares for the people around. I appreciate that. Um my last question, and then I'll um hand it over to committee chair, is just I know you talked about researching fatal crashes. I've asked for the reports on the fatal crashes in my district. I've never gotten them or gotten briefed on them. Is there a report at the end of this investigation? And are there changes made? And I think including us in that conversation would be very helpful. Absolutely. We could do that, and we can provide that report. Um we can we can provide that report in that summary report. We'll do that. Just just awareness, it takes some time sometimes uh for us as we go through that process. We absolutely can do that. Yeah, I like how long because I've been asking for reports for years, and I don't know if they're not done yet.
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