Opinion: BRT Or Bust

The Colfax Lynx Has All The Makings Of A Boondoggle

By Gary Martyn

For the GPHN

Anyone else have Bus Rapid Transit on their mind?

I’ve been following it since sometime in 2019 when I discovered the city’s plan for Colfax. At that time, I thought it a little crazy to carve two lanes of traffic off Colfax between Broadway and Yosemite to build a concrete island down the middle, run buses along that island, eliminate the Route 15 bus, and spend $135 million to do this.

Silly me. The plan is rolling along — and the estimated cost has now more than doubled, at close to $300 million.

Originally, the BRT — which Denver has officially named the “Lynx” — was to run from I-25 to I-225. That would have included Auraria Campus to the west and the Anschutz Medical Campus to the east. The full stretch of Colfax is no longer on the table for some reason — which is too bad. Quickly moving large numbers of people to a three-college campus and a major medical campus should have been a priority.

I am a big believer in public transit and great public transportation is critical for Denver to thrive. However, I do see some problems with the Colfax Lynx, and the plan to reduce car traffic along the major street to one lane in each direction.

There were other options for Colfax. I thought electric trams or streetcars were a better alternative, but the answer always is that rail is too expensive. The concrete wall that will be built down Colfax will alter the street forever and limits future use. No one will want to tear it out after spending so much to build it.

What we get for $300 million are new diesel (not electric) buses (the interiors will at least be clean at the start), frequent service, convenient ticketing stations, and faster service. At rush hours the buses will run every five minutes.

The planners also say this service will be a boon to the businesses along the corridor. I do question that assertion. The Lynx will eliminate some 300 parking spots along Colfax.  With only 16 stops from Broadway to Yosemite (including just six stops along the Park Hill stretch from Colorado Boulevard to Quebec Street), it seems like the Lynx is for commuting, not stopping to shop.   

Businesses along Colfax will have to endure two and a half years of construction. Given Denver’s record of building things on time, 30 months will be the minimum. The 16th Street Mall is already taking a year longer than expected.

This construction will at times close access to side streets, eliminate street parking and make life very difficult for mom-and-pop businesses along the stretch. If any of you remember the reconstruction of South Broadway along Antique Row, you know what I mean. That project forced many businesses to close because the public could not access them. The city is promising assistance, but details are unclear.

Denver Water’s current water main project on Colfax, which started just before the holidays, is providing us with a preview of BRT construction. I live a block off Colfax and I’m witnessing the intermittent chaos the construction is causing. It isn’t daily, but we get spurts of lines of confused drivers trying to figure out where to go. They come through the neighborhood, phones held up looking for way to get through. The project has pushed traffic to 13th, 14th, and 17th avenues.

Denver is currently planning 33 miles of Bus Rapid Transit all over the city. Of that, only the Colfax section (5.5. miles) will be center-running. In fact, when the Lynx crosses into Aurora, it will revert back to the regular curbside bus service with its currently existing stops. The planners say the center running is safer, but it can’t be much safer if most BRT miles are curbside.

In Mexico City, which has a center-running BRT, we found the center island to be a barrier for pedestrians and was effectively a wall between neighborhoods. I have heard of similar problems with the BRT in Albuquerque. It’s hard to justify the cost of building an island, especially when the money could have been spent on more environmentally friendly alternatives instead of the diesel buses that will be used. When I asked why diesel buses were being used, Denver’s BRT team said alternatives were too expensive.

The Colfax corridor suffers from bad air quality, and it seems that when planning this project, alternative fuel buses would have been the starting point.

Some hurdles for this project are the cleanliness and safety issue, ridership, and RTD staffing. RTD is still at a 15 percent staffing shortfall. 15/15L ridership has been down. I see buses in the morning rush hour, and they are rarely more than half full. Other times of day, there are often only four or five riders.

Sadly, there is a reason kids in the neighborhood refer to the 15/15L as the “vomit comet.” It can be a very unpleasant riding experience. When I asked about the safety and cleanliness issue at a meeting last summer, the response was that RTD is in charge of security and operations. That response brought out one of the reasons the Colfax project seems disjointed.

Denver is building the Denver portion of the route, Aurora oversees their section, and RTD is operating the buses. Anybody see how the finger pointing will go?

Gary Martyn grew up in Park Hill. He is a retired media specialist.

Editor’s Note: After several years of preliminary design work, Denver is currently pursuing federal funds to build the Bus Rapid Transit on Colfax. For more on the timeline, branding and design, to sign up for community meetings and to submit your comments and questions about the project, check out the city’s website for the project: tinyurl.com/EColfaxBRT