There’s a Regional Transportation District bus stop at Broadway and Alameda Avenue that this week lost what might be considered a luxury amenity in Denver's public transit infrastructure: a humble bench and an overhead shelter.
The private company that manages it, Street Media Group, took the shelter down over “concerns and complaints about criminal activity,” according to Department of Transportation and Infrastructure spokesperson Nancy Kuhn. Street Media Group did not respond to Denverite’s request for comment.
It’s not the first time one of Denver’s very limited bus shelters disappeared. At Lincoln Street and 1st Avenue, one Denverite took it upon herself to try to keep the shelter clean, which ultimately led to the private company in charge of the bus shelter removing it completely, saying that it was too much to maintain. Later, the Regional Transportation District (RTD) installed its own shelter.
It only takes a quick glance around Denver to find that any bus shelter — even a dirty one — is hard to come by. A 2022 analysis of city bus stops, presented to City Council this week, showed that only 48% of the city’s 2,675 stops have a bench or any form of seating. Many bus stops lack nearby lighting, shade, trash bins, schedule and bus arrival information and protection from weather — they are often just signs on a metal post.
And according to that analysis, lower income areas are less likely to have bus stop infrastructure.
“Areas of need have less amenities on average compared to citywide,” said DOTI Senior Planner My La. The presentation did not show a breakdown of specific neighborhoods.
So why does Denver have so few bus shelters to begin with? And why are the existence of the city’s few benches and shelters up to the whims of private advertising companies?
Part of the problem is that more than half of Denver’s bus stops have no clear group responsible for maintenance.
RTD maintains just 6% of the city’s bus stops. Business Improvement Districts maintain 9%, advertising vendors maintain 11% and residents maintain another 20% through RTD’s adopt-a-stop program, where Denverites can sign up to commit to clean up their stops.
That means that 54% of bus stops — or 1,435 stops — in Denver have “no formal maintainer.” According to DOTI staff, they are maintained by nearby property owners.
The city and RTD have no requirements on how often stops must be cleaned either. RTD cleans some busier stops three to six times per week, while stops run by advertisers are cleaned once per week. Stops run by business improvement districts or “adopted” by residents do not have consistent maintenance requirements.
The requirements range as well, from simply picking up trash to fully removing snow and ice and cleaning glass.
It’s a similar situation to Denver’s sidewalks. While Denver, like most cities, has clear budgets, responsibilities and protocols for things like street repair, sidewalks are largely left up to individual property owners (though that will soon change with Denver’s new voter-approved sidewalk repair fee).
While advertisers clean some stops, the city does not bring in revenue based on bus stop advertising.
Anyone with $400 and a commitment to clean once or twice weekly can purchase advertising at a Denver bus stop for a year.
But only 11% of bus stops are eligible for advertising. According to the DOTI presentation shown this week, most stops have some sort of issue that prevents advertising, such as being inaccessible, zoning or ownership issues or a lack of space.
Due to city regulations, that $400 only covers the cost of permitting and program administration for the advertising sites, not the true value of the advertising space.
What would it take to bring more bus stop infrastructure to Denver?
RTD is embarking on a “bus stop infrastructure accessibility assessment,” which will wrap up in the summer of 2025. That project will “engage stakeholders,” create a database of bus stops, “establish aspirational standards & types” for stops, “inform future investment decisions” and “structure priorities & responsibilities.”
On the city side, Kuhn said that Denver is moving toward construction on 30 new “bus stop landing areas,” which will likely look like a cement pad where people will board and exit buses.
In short: don’t expect citywide bus shelters any time soon.
Denver Streets Partnership Executive Director Jill Locantore said she thinks the city should be responsible for bus shelters that sit in the city right of way.
For her, the lack of infrastructure speaks more broadly to how city infrastructure prioritizes cars over pedestrians and people that rely on public transit.
“It's an issue of basic human dignity. The fact that our bus stops are so poorly provisioned, it's just another way that we're treating transit riders like second class citizens,” she said. “We're just not going to see a major shift in how people get around our city unless we start treating people outside of cards with the same dignity that we treat people inside cars.”
