Hood Guide: Towns | The era of car dominance is ending

A few days before Halloween, a family of four was killed while at a stoplight on Thornton Parkway.

A speeding driver slammed into the car, igniting an explosion that killed the family at the scene, and the driver less than two weeks later.

Roberta Ayala, a council member representing Ward 2, felt the community’s collective shock and grief, and attended a vigil near the accident scene on Nov. 1. While there, another car accident happened while the victims were being honored only feet away.

“It was bad, and it’s really gotten the community concerned about road safety, because we’ve had a few [car crashes] here in town, specifically, in the late evening,” Ayala says. “There’s a lot of car racing, but there’s also people just going too fast and not looking at the road and looking at their phone.” 

Driving is a leading cause of death in the United States that kills more than 120 people every day, a major emitter of air pollution and planet-warming greenhouse gases, a source of daily frustration for many commuters, and a sizable expense for car owners. But in today’s car-dependent world, it can seem like a necessary evil.

But as researchers, policymakers and drivers realize the harm cars have on public health and the environment, communities are exploring strategies to increase walking, biking and public transportation.

Navigating Roadblocks 

Cars were a hallmark of the 20th century. Automobiles like the Model-T made the car universal, and, by the 1930s, more than half of American families owned a car.

Cities changed in kind — the Interstate Highway System began in the 1950s, and those wide, paved streets took people to the suburbs, where they set up single-family homes and began living further from their workplaces. For a century, communities in the U.S. invested in car-based infrastructure that often came at the expense of walkability, creating neighborhoods that are disconnected, spread out and filled with car after car.

Today, many cities have codes and regulations in place that accommodate cars but make it difficult to design for walkability, says Jote Semper, co-director of CU Boulder’s Community Engagement, Design and Research Center.

“The effects of automobiles on the built environment were not understood and that was the time where we set up a lot of the regulations that determine how we build the built form of our cities,” Semper says. “The codes and regulations that we create and we follow produce a bad city. They produce a bad environment.”

In the last decade, Boulder’s Planning and Development Services department has changed zoning regulations to allow for more mixed use development, sensitive infill and density and reducing or eliminating some parking minimums to reduce surface lots, says Lisa Houde, principal city planner.

These changes allow the city to create neighborhoods that feature a mix of housing, retail stores, restaurants, and public transportation depots within walking distance, Houde says.

Residents often express a desire for better access to recreation, groceries and restaurants, says Comprehensive Planning Manager Kristofer Johnson.

“People are interested in having a range of services and opportunities and housing and daily needs within close proximity to where they live, and whether or not that be accessible by a bike or transit or driving,” Johnson said.

Denser neighborhoods also create more affordable housing, which is scarce in Boulder, he adds.

A 2021 survey of major employers in Boulder County found that at least half of their employees live outside of Boulder, some of whom are working remotely and some of whom commute to work. That upward trend helps explain the number of highways and commuter travel through Lafayette. Lafayette’s population is approximately 30,000 people, but the city sees more than 120,000 drivers each day on the three major highways running through town, says Principal Transportation Engineer Michelle Melonakis.

The danger of high-speed traffic is a major concern for residents and is a central priority for the city, which is working with regional partners on transportation projects to reduce highway driving, Melonakis says.

Shannon Berg’s family chose to live in Lafayette so her husband could commute to Boulder for work and their kids could walk and bike to the nearby recreation center, library, school and Old Town. But inattentive, speeding drivers and few crosswalks make that impossible, she says.

Near her home and in Old Town there are too few sidewalks and drivers’ dangerous behavior pushes bikers onto the sidewalks, she explains.

“There really doesn’t seem to be much room for pedestrians at all,” says Berg. “I don’t know where you can walk anymore.”

That difficulty is even higher for differently-abled pedestrians who might use a wheelchair, are blind or have decreased mobility. In some places, accessibility is just now entering the conversation around transportation in a meaningful way, like Erie, where many of the bus stops and sidewalks aren’t accommodating, says Senior Transportation Planner Miguel Aguilar.

“Missing and deficient sidewalks are a big issue, so if somebody is in a wheelchair, we want to make sure that there is a sidewalk connection to wherever they need to get to and that it’s a comfortable ride for them, and a smooth ride,” Aguilar says.

Along Erie’s JUMP bus system, 13 of 15 stops don’t have sidewalk connections or loading zones for wheelchair passengers, Aguilar says. As Erie adds more stops and bus routes, the Town will also retrofit existing stops to be accessible.

In Thorton, nighttime street racing is a popular activity amongst teenagers. It has led to critical and sometimes fatal accidents, but it’s currently embedded in town culture, says Ayala.

“That stuff doesn’t happen every day, but what are we doing to have things for people to do in suburbia, besides driving around their car, just goofing around?” Ayala adds.

In Boulder, new restaurants and stores in neighborhoods fulfill needs expressed by residents, but can also come with side effects like increased traffic and noise that people dislike. While finding consensus of what kind of changes are good or bad is impossible, the city does take feedback into account, and will sometimes make changes to past projects when necessary, says Johnson.

Creating walkable, connected, vibrant cities comes with tradeoffs that people have to decide to accept or not, Semper says.

“If I cannot walk in my neighborhood, then I could figure out a way to get in my car, drive an hour and then go and walk to another place,” explains Semper. “We have normalized this kind of idea, and so any change is going to find some type of reaction, and any change is also going to create the necessity for some trade offs.”

Walk this way 

A world that doesn’t revolve around cars and gas prices and traffic might seem idealistic, but in reality, it already exists. Not just in major cities like San Francisco or Boston where public transportation is ubiquitous, says Semper, but in many smaller American towns, namely, those that were established before cars took over.

Cities like Savannah, Georgia; Philadelphia and New Orleans — which topped one ranking as the most walkable city in the U.S. this year — are compact and dense, with attractions, restaurants, and residences packed into the same neighborhoods. Streets are typically narrow and parking expensive or inaccessible, encouraging foot travel over hopping in the car.

Another example of walkable infrastructure can be found almost anywhere, says Semper: The college campus. 

Photo: colorado.edu

College campuses depend on students quickly, easily and safely walking to primary destinations within a few square miles, which can be a model for cities to learn from, says Semper.

“Thinking about how familiar most Americans [are] of how campuses behave, and how that actually could be ingrained into helping to learn about other places,” Semper adds.

The scale of a college campus has its footing in empirical research, too. Several of Boulder’s guiding documents, the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and Transportation Master Plan refer to the “15-minute neighborhood,” an urban design concept that suggests most people are willing and able to travel about one-quarter mile to reach a destination.

“Anything beyond that, it can be a burden, especially if you’re trying to carry a child or carry groceries,” Johnson says. “That’s when you have to start thinking about other forms of mobility, whether they be scooters and bikes or you’re going to get in the car.”

The 15-minute neighborhood explains why mixed-use zoning is vital to walkability. It allows for human-centered environments that are inviting, and connected, says Valerie Watson, Boulder’s Interim Director of Transportation & Mobility.

But when people want to leave their neighborhood, the city is focused on providing a range of transportation options like biking, walking, scooters, buses or regional transit options between cities, so people aren’t forced into their cars, explains Watson.

That mission also requires creating inviting destinations, says Ayala. In Thornton, conversations regarding new developments focus on reducing car-oriented spaces like fast food restaurants, and instead building sit-down restaurants, parks and shopping centers. 

“That’s been kind of long overdue, and that was something I really ran on,” says Ayala. “We need to revitalize our south end of town.”

Another major priority is creating traffic-calming infrastructure like greenspace, medians and roundabouts to naturally encourage slower, less aggravated driving, Ayala says.

Lafayette resident Jessica English Teitelman is hoping to see similar projects in her neighborhood. Teitleman walks to work and does errands by foot too, and she enjoys walking’s meditative quality. But car exhaust, revving and honking and gravel kicked up by tires can ruin the experience, she says. 

Teitleman has had several close encounters with cars driving too quickly and not paying attention to pedestrians, she says. She feels that adding more greenery and attractive medians would help drivers safer and pedestrians at risk.

“We could engineer our roads, especially in areas with housing, to be so much more socially engineered with the environment so we have those medians and landscaping things that make walking and driving slower more natural,” suggests Teitleman.

Matt Gilbert walks or bikes to most destinations because he is willing to do so, even if it’s a little slower or out of the way, he says. But he understands that poorly lit, narrow, inconvenient routes would discourage people.

“A lot of roads are broken up and orphaned, and a lot of the walking trails got cut up too,” says Gilbert. “It would be great to see those all connected in a more comprehensive network.”

People need to envision walkable cities and the changes required to create them, says Semper. Without that passion and open-mindedness, it will be difficult to be successful. 

“We know how to create a great street, and we know all the assistance that we could put in place to make us less dependent on cars, and the street more walkable, but all those would require a lot more energy to actually be implemented,” says Semper. “That requires a lot of political will, and if people don’t want to change their neighborhoods, it’s also going to be very difficult to do.”

Forging a new path 

Erie’s Transportation & Mobility Division was founded two years ago. Lafayette published its very first Multimodal Transportation Plan in 2023. Topics surrounding walkability and public transit that were once niche are now central investments across the Front Range.

That shift allows cities to collaborate on regional projects that extend across city limits to leverage resources and benefit more Coloradans, says Gerrit Slatter, Capital Projects Manager for Boulder’s Transportation Department. Grants and funding for walkable infrastructure are competitive, and while that can be challenging, it means that exciting innovation is happening all across the region.

“Multimodal transportation used to be a thing that those people in Boulder did, and it was sort of an afterthought, if thought of at all in other places,” says Slatter. “Boulder is just one of many, many, many communities that are chasing these grants and getting funding for it, and so you don’t have to look very hard at the evidence that it’s super important to a lot of communities.” 

Regional partnerships are focusing on creating interconnectivity amongst cities through public transportation between major destinations like Boulder, Denver, Longmont, Denver International Airport with stops Erie and Lafayette.

“We’ve had quite a bit more project funding than Lafayette could ever come up with on our own, because we had leveraged so many grants and working with Boulder County and Erie and Superior and Broomfield on different projects,” says Melonakis.

Transportation departments are seeing major funding opportunities, including a recent $23 million grant from The U.S. Department of Transportation to make Boulder’s roads safer and reduce car collisions. In Boulder, about 80% of capital improvement projects are funded in part by grants, says Slatter.

Grants are essential to this work, because existing city budgets can’t always meet the huge expense that large-scale infrastructure projects require.

But grants come with price tags too, like additional applications and oversight for clearances, and parameters around implementation that can both limit projects or significantly extend their time frames, says Erie’s Aguilar.

“There’s a lot of regulations and policy that we need to follow because of the type of funds we’re using, lots of red tape everywhere, and lots that folks don’t see,” Aguilar adds.

As much as transportation departments may want to invest in alternative transportation, existing roads require significant funding for maintenance. Investing in roads at the optimal point, before degradation is severe, helps keep costs low, says Slatter. 

In Boulder, that includes a major push to make arterial roadways, where the majority of accidents happen, safer and better connected, adds Watson.

For Sean Haney, a Boulder resident who enjoys traveling both by car and bike, any investments into pedestrian infrastructure is a benefit for drivers, too. Marked crosswalks,protected bike lanes, lighting and improved public transportation reduces traffic, discourages activities like jaywalking and makes roads safer for everyone.

“When I’m driving I do not want to have a close call, I hate that weird limbo when someone is trying to cross and I don’t know whether to stop or not; I would like [that] to be as clear cut as possible,” says Haney.

Shane Wachlin, a Boulder resident and avid biker, sees a similar feedback loop come about from improved walkability. The more bikers and pedestrians there are, the more conscious drivers will be. That will help more people feel safer walking and biking around town, he says.

He wants to see more opportunities for people to learn bike safety and etiquette, like how to change a flat, signal a turn or where to bike when cars are present, he says. People need to be encouraged to bike, and drivers need to be dissuaded from using their cars, he says.

“Driving just has to become more painful, because I think the infrastructure’s there, and most people aren’t going to like that, but I think it is pretty doable,” says Wachlin. 

Similarly, Aguilar is focused on making other modes of transportation more appealing than driving. Erie currently offers public transportation via the JUMP bus line from downtown Erie to Boulder, and is investigating expansions into Denver and Bus Rapid transit along US-287 and State Highway 7.

But the majority of the budget still goes to roads, which makes driving most people’s go-to option, he says.

“We need to start looking at our budget, shifting funds around, so that we make our transit amenities appealing and more desirable and provide to those residents who don’t have a vehicle a sense of pride in taking transit,” says Aguilar.

Though there is much progress to be made towards these goals, current strategies are already working. While single-occupancy vehicles remain the most common mode of transportation, the Boulder Valley Modal Shift Report shows that its overall use has declined in the last three decades, with all other modes — buses, walking, biking and public transportation — becoming more widely used. 

These kinds of changes have unique ripple effects, Semper notes. Many gas stations, highways and parking garages look almost identical, no matter which part of the country they’re in. When cities are created for their unique populations and cultural identities, they become more vibrant, exciting, pleasant places to live.

“The wonderful thing is that the world is an immense place, and the United States is a gigantic country that should be full of diverse places, not places that don’t look very different to each other,” says Semper. “What we need to start creating is the opportunity to actually create spaces full of diversity of urban forms.” 

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