CDOT Survey

The Colorado Department of Transportation now has a brief survey online to help them set transportation priorities. Technically, the time to answer the survey ended last Friday, but since the announcement of the survey came out on Thursday, I am not too worried about that. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VZYMYTF You can then tell Stacey Stegman at stacey.stegman@dot.co.us or 303-757-9362 that you did.


I told her that most of the people with constituents do not care much what those people think.


What do you think CDOT's priorities should be?

What if Neither Proposal is OK?

6 pm, Thursday, November 3
Denver Union Station Historic Building Presentations
Colorado Convention Center, Rooms 201 & 203
700 14th Street, Denver
Light Rail: D, F, H

There are two competing proposals for the redevelopment of Union Station, both of which you can see in a couple of weeks. One by the Union Station Neighborhood Company and one by the Union Station Alliance. I cannot find any recent information about what the proposals will be, but it looks like Union Station Neighborhood Company is proposing a public market and restaurant and retail space with office space on the upper floors. Apparently, the Union Station Alliance is proposing a hotel for the upper floors with lots of retail on the ground floor. They are also proposing a lot of space for security.

I think that the public market concept looks better. There is more space given over to people who are taking the train and the services in the station are ones that train passengers would use. The more trains that run into the station, the more money that this concept can make. It creates an entity that might advocate for more long-distance trains to and from Denver as these are the passengers who are most likely to buy large amounts of food. It also might bring a farmer's market back to Union Station. In fact, this is the proposal that is the most flexible.

I am concerned about the hotel concept as boutique hotels are not usually successful near train stations because of the noise. There are a few large convention type hotels that are successful on top of train stations, but these are much larger than what is being proposed. Let's take the hotel over Nagoya Station in Japan as an example of a successful hotel in a similar price range to what is being proposed for Denver. First, the trains all run underground. Second, there are several stories of mall in between the train halls and the hotel. Third, more trains run into this station than will run into Denver, and they come from further away. Fourth, four million people live in the city of Nagoya. Small hotels near train stations with ground level tracks are usually cheap. I am concerned that putting a hotel in the station would create a reason not to put more trains into Union Station.

I am hoping that we do get something that allows people to buy groceries and relatively cheap takeout in the station, so the public market option looks to best.

How do you think we should use Union Station?

You can take the bus to CEC's Hoedown tomorrow in Palisade

Friday, October 21 6-11pm
CEC's Harvest Hoedown
Palisade Brewing Company
200 Peach Avenue, Palisade, CO
Cost: $18 (advance), $20 at the door, children 12 and under free
Bus: 4 to go (schedule is slowloading PDF), free shuttle to get back

The last 4 bus will take you to the Palisade Brewing Company where the event is being held, but how would you get back? Luckily the Colorado Environmental Coalition (CEC) is running a shuttle when the show ends at 11 pm. The shuttle goes to the Peach Tree Shopping Center in Clifton, the Safeway on F Road and 29th, the Ale House at 12th and Patterson, the Moss Performing Arts Center on the CMU Campus, and downtown Grand Junction at 7th and Main.

All tickets include bluegrass music by Waiting on Trial and a free beer. Buying online enters you in a drawing to win a CEC T-shirt and a gift-certificate for two beer-filled growlers form the Palisade Brewing Company. (You must be present at the drawing to win.) Dinner will be available for $9 and there will be a silent auction, mainly of travel good and outdoor gear.

This could be a part of a possible train trip. The journey from Glenwood Springs costs $36 round trip. You leave Glenwood Springs at 1:53 pm and arrive in Grand Junction at 3:57. Typically, this train runs a couple of hours late, so this might be a good option for a last minute trip if you can get out of work early. Watch the price though. The return leaves at 10:23 and arrives in Glenwood Springs at 12:10. This train is more likely to be on time. There are several hotels or B&B's in downtown Grand Junction and a few (more expensive) in Palisade.

And if you go to this by transit, make sure that you tell your elected officials AND the organizers of the event that you did. We need to get more funding for transit and we need to get the environmental organizations that we support to advocate for transit more.

We need to reduce car dependence to reduce poverty

Friday, October 21

Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force

Sister Carmen Center

655 Aspen Ridge, Lafayette

Bus: 225, L. The 225 may get you there a little late. The L will absolutely get you there late running both directions, although you may be better of missing the presentations.

The Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force will be meeting this Friday in Lafayette at the Sister Carmen Center, 655 Aspen Ridge from 2 to 5 for a meeting focused on poverty in Boulder County. The EOPR was created by the Colorado legislature in 2009 to create a plan to cut poverty in our state by half by 2019. They are not doing so well; poverty, especially child poverty, is up. Perhaps the length of the meeting is to make up for the fact that the group really has not accomplished anything so far. Hopefully, it is partly to let people influence the process.

The focus of the meeting will be to introduce people to the Circles Campaign. There is an hour of this.

There is also more than an hour of public participation as well, including both public testimony and small group discussion. I hope that someone brings up the role that forcing people to drive plays in creating poverty and the potential for poverty. Maintaining a car costs between $6-9,000 a year, and this is a cost that people in most other developed countries can chose to spend or not. In other developed countries it is unusual for anyone to lose their job because they can no longer drive or because of transit cuts.

Right now the EOPR has four committees: education, consumer protection, metrics, and employment. Housing does get some attention under consumer protection, but transit is nowhere to be found. If we are going to reduce poverty, we need to directly attack the things that make life in the US so expensive. This means looking at housing policy, industrial policy, and transportation policy.

(I would like to thank Megan Davis and Boulder County for letting me know about this meeting and for providing some of the information in this post.)

No local potatoes?

When I went to the store today, the peaches were from Utah rather than Colorado. This may have been because of climate; the peach season in Colorado was actually longer than usual this year. But I am often surprised at how hard it it is to get food that is grown in state. Potatoes keep all year and grow well in some parts of the state. I can get potatoes from Idaho and Michigan all year round, why not from Colorado? Do they all sell before the end of the season?

We cannot grow enough food here in Colorado to feed ourselves, our growing season is too short. Even states that have more farm-friendly climates import a lot of food because people in the US are used to having the same foods in their supermarkets year round. Most of this food is shipped by truck, and some fresh food companies are having a hard time finding trucks to transport their goods. This may be because higher diesel prices have made things harder for trucking companies, meaning that there are fewer trucks out there.

Whatever the reason, train companies, such as Railex, are filling the gap. Each Railex train takes 200 trucks off our highways which reduces traffic congestion, making all forms of transportation more reliable. It also means that the states that rail serves have a more flexible food delivery system. If food can't get where it needs to go by truck, a train can bring it before it rots.

Colorado is particularly dependent on trucks for our food. Some grain is shipped by rail, usually heading out of state, but vegetable and fruits usually come in by truck. Railex does not ship here.

Trains not only add depth to our transportation system, they have the additional benefit of being more environmentally friendly than trucks. A Railex train uses a third the diesel fuel that those 200 trucks do and produces a third the greenhouse gases. For companies like Albert's Organics, this is important.

But services like Railex need a certain kind of infrastructure to work. Tracks need to be smooth so that food does not get bruised in transport. The trains need to be able to go fast, more like passenger trains, so that the produce does not rot before it can be sold. The slow speed of a coal train does not work. There also needs to be the capacity to load and unload trains indoors. That I know of, these conditions can only be met in California, Washington, New York with a new distribution center coming in the southeast (North Carolina?). Illinois may have the tracks that can meet this demand, but may not have the proper warehouse capacity anymore.

How does this influence what foods we can get in our supermarkets? It means that farmers in the states of California, Washington, and New York know that they can distribute fresh foods and vegetables around the country, no matter what happens to our transportation system. It means that distributors operating in those states can boast about being environmentally sensitive and sustainable in a way that distributors in other states cannot. It means that it is always worth more to invest in agriculture in states with good rail infrastructure even when the climate and soil conditions are comparable (or even better) elsewhere.

It means that our uneven infrastructure promotes the centralization of agriculture. If we want a more balanced food supply, which includes being able to buy local when we are buying produce that grows well where we live, we need to have more consistent rail infrastructure. If rail in Colorado is only good for coal trains, that is the only thing that they will carry. And all the businesses that could benefit from good trains will go elsewhere.

City of Boulder Transportation Advisory Board

I have written a few posts about the Transportation Master Plan that Boulder County is developing, but I think is my first about a meeting by the city.  The City of Boulder Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) usually meets the second Monday of each month. This month they are meeting the third Monday, October 17 at 6 pm at the Municipal Building Lobby, 1777 Broadway, Boulder.

Each meeting starts with 45 minutes of public participation about anything that is not on the agenda. Then each agenda item gets its own comment period. In addition, the first agenda item next week is "Public Participation".

So if you want to have your say about transportation in the City of Boulder, next Monday would be the perfect time.

New Sidewalks Near Colfax?

Update: The plans for sidewalks and other urban elements in the 40 West art district will be presented at the next public meeting of the Lakewood Planning Commission on Wednesday, November 17 at 7pm in the City Council Chambers at 480 S. Allison Parkway. Buses 1, 3, and 76 stop underneath. Go up the stairs to the east and then go into the building to the south to get to the council chambers.


At the first meeting that I went to about the 40 West Arts District, a resident of the Two Creeks neighborhood asked, "Are we going to get sidewalks?" Perhaps the answer to that question is in the draft put together by the 40 West Arts District: Urban Design and Mobility Concepts (PDF).

Maybe. As you can tell from the title, this is not the clearest document in the world.  The various parts of the document do not seem to serve the same purpose. It is not clear what some of the pictures are supposed to be illustrating. One section says that there is no funding and no timeline, but there seem to be some funding sources later in the document. Planning jargon is used instead of plain English, including the deadly and undefined "improvements".

There is one example of jargon that is used well. That is "streetscape". This is not a word that I was familiar with and don't think it is one that many people use. But it is good that the planners in Lakewood are using it because it indicates that they are seeing streets from a human perspective. The section on streetscapes (p.10-14) is the most informative of the whole document. I would really like to hear what the neighbors want to have happen.

The signage described starting on p. 18 is good. Partly because the designs exist. Signs in many parts of the metro area are simply inadequate. These signs use the 40West logo well, and look like these are designed to be visible for people moving by car, by bike, and by foot.

If you live in the area, are a student at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, are interested in new arts districts, or likely to travel to the area once the new light rail station opens, you can tell the City of Lakewood what you think. Actually, this event is just an open house, but since the community process has been slightly hijacked by local persons of importance, it is always good to let the planning department know what actual citizens think.

Wednesday, October 19, 5-7 pm (come anytime)

Lakewood-West Colfax Business Improvement District

7125 W. Colfax Avenue, Lakewood

Bus: 16, 16L - among the metro areas most frequent buses

You can also attend meetings of the Lakewood Planning Commission. They usually meet  at 7 pm the first and third Wednesday of every month at the city offices at 480 S. Allison Parkway. The public meeting about streetscapes in the 40 West area is scheduled for Wedneday, November 16.