A scuttled road diet for Alameda Avenue has caused discontent within the advisory board for the city’s transportation department — including one resignation, with more possible.
Several members of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure’s advisory board questioned the city’s commitment to safe roads during a board meeting where executive director Amy Ford defended the decision to make a last-minute change to a plan to reduce lanes on Alameda Avenue.
Earlier this month, DOTI altered a finalized plan that would have fully eliminated a lane on a stretch of Alameda Avenue that residents have described as unsafe for drivers and pedestrians alike.
Alameda is part of DOTI’s High Injury Network, which identifies the most dangerous streets in Denver.
In the revised plan, instead of fully eliminating a lane, the agency now plans to convert one of the westbound travel lanes into a series of "turn pockets" from Franklin Street to Pearl Street. There will continue to be two eastbound lanes.
The change elicited strong jeers from neighbors who have been calling for change on Alameda, including leadership from the local registered neighborhood organization. Many said DOTI catered to wealthy neighbors who didn’t engage in the multi-year process to change the corridor.
A board composed of the city’s biggest safety and mobility advocates disapproved of the last-minute change.
Frustrations boiled over in a Tuesday meeting at the Transportation and Infrastructure Advisory Board. Members of the 19-member citizen board grilled DOTI executive director Ford over the decision. Many said the last-minute change was disrespectful to residents who have been engaged with the city over Alameda Avenue’s safety issues for years.
“We've had five years of public engagement on this,” board member Allen Cowgill said. “The design was clearly final. We had construction announced and then everybody was surprised by this.”
Jane Churchill, a longtime bike advocate and member of the board, said the new design “directly degrades left-hand turn safety compared to the original final design.”
“I failed to see how there's a good engineering reason for these changes,” Churchill said. “This doesn't make any sense to me except in the realm of politics and our department should not be prioritizing politics over safety in people's lives on our roads, especially not when that change would actually cost us more money in a tough budget environment.”
A loosely organized group of opponents to the original Alameda plan said DOTI’s data was inconclusive and rushed to a conclusion that threatened “to create substantial and lasting negative impacts on traffic safety, neighborhood livability, and the vitality of local businesses.”
Ford continually defended the department’s decision during the meeting. She argued the new design is a good compromise between the neighbors concerned with safety and those concerned that the original design would have sent increased traffic down side streets.
“In looking at this design, we felt like that actually addressed the safety and the data and the designs that we had along with the diversions,” she said.
Some members, however, didn’t buy it. Jaime Lewis, a disability rights activist and long-serving member of the advisory board, said Ford failed to alleviate concerns surrounding safety and transparency.
“She went on for the rest of the meeting and just kept spewing the same garbage over and over again,” Lewis told Denverite.
Some say this is the latest in a 'disturbing pattern' of DOTI watering down safety projects.
Lewis subsequently submitted a letter of resignation to DOTI. He said the changes to Alameda road diet plan are the latest in a series of decisions from DOTI that undermine his commitment to building safer roads.
He and other members cited projects on Market and Blake streets, a scraped bike lane near Sloan’s Lake and other decisions.
“All of a sudden these projects get changed at the last minute, and we're starting to see a very disturbing trend that it just seems like they're listening to the minority,” he said.
He may not be the only one to resign from the advisory board. Advisory board co-chair Aylene McCallum said others, including herself, are questioning whether they want to devote time to the board after several months’ worth of questionable decisions.
“These resignations, will they put pressure on the administration? I think that's for the administration to decide, but I believe that these resignations are being done in principle,” McCallum said. “These individuals are concerned about the direction of mobility investment in our city because safety does not appear to be the priority.”
A DOTI spokesperson said the department was in an all-day planning meeting and could not immediately respond to a request for comment.
