More vehicles are crossing a U.S. 50 bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir and fewer closures are anticipated after Labor Day — a move that transportation officials hope will provide relief to traffic flows across a critical route that connects Montrose, Gunnison and Hinsdale counties.

Single-lane traffic in alternating directions is now allowed over Middle Bridge west of Gunnison for six hours a day, up from four, and after Labor Day, the bridge will open from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Colorado Department of Transportation officials said during a meeting Tuesday evening. 

School buses are also allowed to cross the bridge, which abruptly shut down April 18 after inspectors discovered a 3-inch-long crack along a steel beam. The first day of school for students at Gunnison Watershed School District is Aug. 26. 

“I still remember the kids trying to take the boat to school earlier this year,” Herman Stockinger, CDOT’s deputy director, said Tuesday. “It took creativity for the community to come together to make that happen and it made for a great story, but that’s just not sustainable for our school kids.” 

If repairs continue as scheduled, officials hope to open the bridge to all legal loads by mid-October.

“We think this updated plan does the best job of balancing immediate community needs with our shared goal of completing the structural repairs this year,” Stockinger said. 

The expanded schedule comes as crews continue to repair the bridge that connects the towns of Gunnison and Montrose. 

The repairs require 410 tons of steel, which include 1,400 individual steel plates and 55,000 individual bolts, said Jason Proskovec, a project director with Kiewit Construction, which CDOT brought in to handle and carry out the bridge repair work. 

Proskovec said the 410 tons of steel were procured from a mill in North Carolina, then was sent to six shops in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas and Colorado to be cut into shapes and drilled with holes, before it was sent to Gunnison.

The majority of the bolts came from a manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon, before they were tested in Ohio, Proskovec said. 

“So a pretty huge national, logistical effort to pull this off,” he said. 

Repairs are also underway on the Lake Fork Bridge, which is west of Middle Bridge. Lake Fork was built with the same high-strength steel that was welded on in the early 1960s using a technique that turned out to be faulty. 

Attention was drawn to both bridges after federal highway officials ordered mandatory inspections. CDOT identified five potentially problematic bridges across the state that used the problematic T-1 steel. Further inspection revealed that there were three that fit the federal criteria for further action — two bridges over Blue Mesa and one in Bent County (that bridge was deemed safe last year). 

After Labor Day, alternating traffic will be allowed across the Lake Fork Bridge between 6 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. At night, there will be more closures as crews conduct repairs, but traffic will still be allowed across, officials said. 

Vehicles of all legal weights are currently allowed across the Lake Fork Bridge.

During Tuesday’s meeting, one resident asked if CDOT could add porta-potties by the road, citing they have seen people go to the bathroom on the road as they wait in the line of traffic before crossing the Middle Bridge. Officials said they are addressing the issue. 

“I want to acknowledge again that this has been more than an inconvenience, it has been a major impact on people’s lives,” Gunnison County Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels said. 

“We love that we are at the end of the road, we love that we are hard to access so that this place is special for us, but it has been an especially trying time,” Puckett Daniels said. “Gunnison County is open if you want to come visit, if you want to fish on Blue Mesa, it’s a really good time to be here, but you do have to jump through a few hurdles to make that happen.”

County Road 26 remains open as a detour outside of the scheduled openings across the U.S. 50 bridge and for heavier vehicles, including campers, trucks pulling trailers and semitrucks. 

For now, officials are not adjusting the times a piloted car will guide vehicles along the detour route, but are considering opening more times late at night, said Martin Schmidt, assistant county manager for public works for Gunnison County.

“Continually increasing access is what’s occurred throughout this project,” he said, “and we continue to push for that.” 

Colorado does not require motor vehicle insurance for electric bikes as long as the bikes fit the state’s electrical assisted bicycle classifications and aren’t motorcycles.

The state has three classifications for e-bikes: 

• Class 1: an electric assisted bicycle with a motor that provides power when the rider is pedaling and stops when the bike reaches a speed of 20 mph.
• Class 2: an electric assisted bicycle with a motor that provides power but stops when the bike reaches a speed of 20 mph.
• Class 3: an electric assisted bicycle with a motor that provides power when the rider is pedaling but stops when the bicycle reaches a speed of 28 mph.

Insuring e-bikes, however, is recommended by some insurance providers, who recommend at least liability coverage in case of an accident. Companies have started offering special e-bike insurance for riders as some companies don’t insure them as property under homeowners policies.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

See full source list below.

A Colorado law that goes into effect Aug. 7, 2024, will allow motorcycles to ride between lanes past cars — but only if traffic has stopped. Riders must make sure lanes are wide enough to allow them to pass safely, and they are limited to 15 mph when overtaking stopped cars.

Motorcycles cannot pass using the right shoulder, and they cannot move in the opposite direction of traffic in the lanes.

The new rule aims to reduce congestion by allowing riders to move up at stop lights and during traffic jams, while decreasing the chance for motorcycles to get rear-ended. 

California and Utah are among states that allow motorcycles to ride between lanes under some circumstances. The American Motorcyclist Association endorses the practice, saying it gives motorcyclists an “escape route” from being rear-ended. An Oregon transportation study found it also prevents air-cooled engines from overheating by keeping motorbikes in motion.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

See full source list below.

Fewer people have died on Colorado’s roads in the first six months of 2024, compared with last year, when pedestrian and cyclist fatalities reached an all-time high, according to preliminary data from the Colorado Department of Transportation.

From January to June, there were 294 fatalities on roads around the state, down 9% from the same time period last year, the department said Thursday. Impairment, speed and distracted driving were the main factors that led to the crashes.

Preliminary data shows that traffic deaths fell in many areas, including pedestrians and crashes involving an impaired driver.

In the first half of 2024:

• 47 pedestrians died (compared with 62 in first six months of 2023)
• 3 bicyclists died (compared with 8 in 2023)
• 91 people were killed in crashes involving impaired driving (compared with 108 in 2023)
• 90 people who were not wearing a seatbelt died in crashes (compared with 96 in 2023)
• 52 motorcyclists died (down from 55 in 2023)
• 36 children and teens died, including those who are 19 years old and younger (down from 47 in 2023)

“While these improvements are encouraging, even one death is too many, and we still have a lot of work to reach our ultimate goal of zero fatalities on Colorado roads,” Darrell Lingk, CDOT’s Office of Transportation Safety director, said Thursday in a prepared statement. “The data from the first half of 2024 shows our collective efforts are making a difference, but every driver and road user must continue to prioritize safety and make responsible choices behind the wheel every time.”

More robust law enforcement, social media safety campaigns to educate the public, and road infrastructure projects are helping to bring down the number of traffic deaths, said Sam Cole, CDOT’s safety communications manager. 

The state is continuing to install rumble strips on the side of the road to keep drivers from drifting out of their lane, and installing better striping.

“It really is those low-cost, high-impact projects that are making the biggest difference,” Cole said, adding that roadway departures are a “huge contributor” to fatal crashes.

The department is also working to improve traffic flow as bottlenecks often lead to crashes, Cole said. Roundabouts also help reduce traffic crashes at intersections by about 90%, he said. 

To prioritize pedestrian safety in local communities, money has been used to create more crosswalks, add lighting to alert drivers of people crossing the street and build refuge islands in the middle of wide intersections.

“We’ve really focused on our most vulnerable roadway users out there,” Cole said.

In 2023, 720 people died in traffic crashes in Colorado, which was a slight decrease from 2022. While traffic deaths saw a slight dip, the numbers painted a grim picture for those traveling by foot or bike. In 2023, Colorado saw its highest number of pedestrian deaths since at least 2002. 

The causes for the crashes aren’t easy to identify and there are several theories to explain how driver and pedestrian behaviors, vehicle size and road design all fit together. 

It’s a problem not unique to Colorado — the number of pedestrians killed by drivers in the U.S. has been climbing for more than a decade and in 2022, it reached a 40-year high when more than 7,500 pedestrians were killed.

Meanwhile, in other countries of comparable weather, pedestrian and cyclist deaths have generally been declining, not rising.

“Responsible choices are essential to continue positive trends and make our roads safer for all,” Lingk said. “Many drivers understand that their behavior behind the wheel affects everyone’s safety, but it’s important to remember that no one is invincible — risky actions can cost lives in an instant.”

While the data appears promising, Pete Piccolo, the executive director of advocacy group Bicycle Colorado, expressed caution over the numbers, citing last year’s record-high numbers.

“Although we should celebrate this year-over-year progress, we must remember that the comparison point was the deadliest year in Colorado’s history for bicyclists and pedestrians — 20 bicyclists and 133 pedestrians lost their lives in traffic crashes last year,” Piccolo said. 

Strategies to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries have long been known, he said, and as they are implemented in Colorado, they seem to be working. 

“The challenge before us is to accelerate the pace of implementation,” Piccolo said, “which includes increasing the amount of funds invested in making our roads safer for all users, especially bicyclists and pedestrians, who are most vulnerable.”

Back in March, the governor and transit leaders hopped a train to Longmont, to demonstrate an alternative to the madness on Interstate 25. Once rail service returns, that is. 

No need to buy a ticket, just yet.

Coloradans have been paying for imaginary trains for nearly two decades, as part of the FasTracks ballot initiative, passed in 2004. Now our elected trainspotters are looking for half a billion more dollars to fire up the engines from Pueblo to FoCo.  

This time it’s going to happen. No really. Just a few more details to clean up.

Rail service will return…

Of course, some people are OK with the train delay

The U.S. 50 bridge over the Blue Mesa Reservoir will temporarily reopen for the July 4 weekend, restoring a critical route across Colorado for holiday travel while repairs along the middle span continue, officials said Thursday.

Emergency vehicles and those traveling in smaller vehicles can begin crossing Middle Bridge west of Gunnison at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Colorado Department of Transportation said, announcing the completion of the first phase of repairs of the bridge that shut down April 18. 

The bridge will be open 12 hours a day through the holiday weekend. But starting July 8, the bridge will open just twice daily as crews to continue to work on repairs.

July 3 through July 7, a pilot car will guide cars in each direction across the bridge from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., CDOT said. After the holiday weekend, pilot cars will lead single-direction traffic across the bridge in alternating directions from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. 

Passenger cars, pickup trucks, vans, motorcycles and emergency vehicles will be allowed over the bridge, CDOT said. Heavier vehicles — including campers and RVs, trucks pulling trailers, semitrucks and buses — will be required to take the County Road 26 detour. 

Crews completed the first of two stages of critical repairs on the horizontal part of an L-shaped beam along the central span of the bridge, where inspectors found a 3-inch crack in structural steel, CDOT said Thursday.

The unexpected shutdown of the bridge — which serves as a critical link for Montrose, Gunnison and Hinsdale counties — left residents scrambling for solutions to get to school, work and doctor appointments. 

Construction teams, working from scaffolding suspended from the side of the bridge, started the process of bolting four plates in four parts of the bridge June 12, CDOT said. The first phase of repairs addressed parts of the bridge that posed “an imminent risk to structural integrity,” the agency said. 

Each steel plate is about 23 feet long, 2½ feet wide and 2½ inches thick and weighs about 9,000 pounds, CDOT said. More than 200 bolts were needed to secure each plate in place.  

The shutdown of the bridge came at the urging of federal highway officials in April after crews found the crack during a mandatory inspection of the high-strength steel bridge. The inspection was required because of known issues with similarly constructed bridges around the country.

CDOT identified five potentially problematic bridges across the state that used T-1 steel. Further inspection revealed there were three that fit the federal criteria for further action — two bridges over Blue Mesa and one in Bent County.

Crews will look at potential repairs for the smaller Lake Fork Bridge, about 2 miles west of the Middle Bridge, and install strain-gauge sensors to monitor the effect of traffic loading on the structure, CDOT said. Traffic will be reduced to a single lane starting Friday through Monday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. as teams install the sensors.

The Bent County bridge is small and low to the ground and was quickly inspected. It was deemed safe in 2023. 

As tourists, commuters, ranchers and shoppers await the promised partial opening of the Blue Mesa bridge by July 4, “what-ifs” and “how-comes” continue floating around about the abrupt closure of the bridge 10 weeks ago.

The 1,500-foot-long span known as the Middle Bridge was closed when inspectors, acting on directives from the Federal Highway Administration, found a significant crack in a crucial weld on a bridge girder.

The bridge was closed to traffic that same day, creating commuter chaos among people who had to chose between detours of six or seven hours to travel between Montrose and Gunnison, a trip that takes about 75 minutes when U.S. 50 is open. Parents were separated from their school-age children, workers from their jobs and patients from their medical caregivers.

As surprising as the closure was for those U.S. 50 drivers, state and federal highway officials had known for decades that there could be problems with bridges, like Middle Bridge, that were constructed with a certain kind of high-strength steel that was welded on bridges using a technique that turned out to be faulty.

The FHWA in 1978 created a “fracture control plan” for such bridges and in 1995 made new welding methods a standard for all highway bridge construction. But the bridges stayed open in a sort of watch-and-wait mode.

In 2011, the FHWA issued a technical advisory warning about “fracture critical” bridges after the Sherman Minton Bridge over the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana suffered extensive cracking that year. The bridge was closed for more than five months for repairs.

That cracking on a major bridge sparked an awareness that bridges across the country built with the steel called T-1 might pose unique safety problems. The Middle Bridge was in that category.

The advisory to states pointed out that all bridges built with T-1 steel should be inventoried and regularly inspected using ultrasound to look inside the welds that were most prone to cracking. Those inspections identified another bridge with dangerous cracks in 2021. The Hernando de Soto Bridge across the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee, had to be closed for about 2½ months for repairs.

Those major bridge closures led to more focus on T-1 steel, which turned out to be truly high-strength after it was developed in the 1960s, but to also have a previously unknown problem with brittleness. Welded joints on T-1 constructions tend to develop problems with cracking because hydrogen was introduced into the welds during construction — a practice that is no longer acceptable today. Hydrogen gas can build up in the metal of a weld, forcing breakdowns in the structure.

Nowadays, that problem is understood and mitigated with hydrogen control measures and test welds during bridge constructions.

Why was CDOT behind on inspections?

The Hernando de Soto Bridge problem prompted the Federal Highway Administration to follow its earlier advisory with a more strongly worded memorandum issued Dec. 13, 2021. That message directed all state highway departments to identify potentially problematic T-1 bridges by the end of March 2022.

Testing on those bridges and reports on the results of those tests were required to be complete by the end of March 2024.

Colorado missed those deadlines in spite of the memorandum stating, “these actions are critical to maintaining safety, avoiding similar closures of important structures, and the major disruptions that follow.” 

The highway administration granted Colorado an extension, according to a FHWA spokesperson, because federal law requires the agency to give states an opportunity to address noncompliance issues.

The spokesperson, who did not want to be identified, said “Colorado is currently doing that.”

There were reasons why Colorado slipped into noncompliance in the 2½ years since the memorandum was issued, according to Colorado Department of Transportation communications director Matt Inzeo.

The state agency initially had to wade through state and federal transportation requirements as bridge engineers went on the hunt for problematic bridges, Inzeo said. Meeting those enhanced requirements took place outside the scope of the state’s normal bridge inspection schedule.

CDOT completed an initial review of all 8,450 bridges in the state in early 2022.

After bridges that potentially used T-1 steel were identified, CDOT then had to sift through the detailed construction documentation to determine if they could be eliminated from the list that would require further testing.

That meant digging into details of how bridges were welded together and if they were constructed using the methods that are no longer considered safe. They found five potentially problematic T-1 bridges.

Further inspection showed there were three that fit the federal criteria for further action — two over Blue Mesa Reservoir and one in Bent County. The Bent County bridge is small and low to the ground and was easily and quickly inspected. It was deemed to be safe in 2023.

The Blue Mesa bridges were a whole other matter. Doing the extensive federally mandated testing required extraordinary measures for the Middle Bridge. The Middle Bridge is 1,500-feet long and has 12-foot-high girders that are as long as football fields. The bridge sits over some of the deepest water in the state.

Initially, the department had to conduct load analysis on the U.S. 50 bridges to determine what kind of weight the semitrucks, tourist trailers, timber flatbeds and regular traffic were placing on the structures. Load requirements for the bridges have increased since they were built.

A full phase of testing on the Middle Bridge was approved in September 2023. That was planned to include stripping paint and peering into the bridge structure with ultrasound devices — in the same way a doctor might examine a damaged joint.

CDOT could not do the specialized inspecting and testing in-house. It contracted with Benesch, a Denver engineering firm, for that. That took six months to get underway. Benesch was not able to inspect the critical butt welds on the bridges until April because it was not possible to carry out the testing during the bitter, blustery winters that Blue Mesa is notorious for.

The ultrasound equipment that uses gels to conduct the sound waves through the metal would not work in frigid temperatures. Workers dangling from the sides of the bridge would not be safe in winter storms.

Chaos or success?

Inspections finally began April 8. Ten days later, when a Benesch employee found the now-infamous 3-inch crack that spelled big trouble, the bridge that had stood for 61 years with its questionable construction was deemed by state and federal highway authorities to be dangerous enough to warrant an immediate closure.

Highway authorities who have seen the test results have not argued with that decision.

But critics of the response, who asked not to be identified, called CDOT’s early response “chaotic.”

CDOT brought in Kiewit Construction to handle planning and to carry out the bridge repair work as well as help with detours. Michael Baker Engineering was hired to design the bridge repairs that Kiewit is constructing.

John Cater, a division administrator for the FWHA, said even though Colorado did not meet the deadline for T-1 bridge inspections, once the problem was identified, “I think they moved pretty aggressively to address it.”

Cater noted that the Blue Mesa bridge has presented “a unique challenge” because of its size and its location over deep water.

“In some ways this is a success story,” Cater said. “The crack was found, and it was closed before anything happened.”

Inspectors for CDOT are still in search of cracks. Initial testing has been done on Blue Mesa’s Lake Fork Bridge, but more in-depth testing will not take place until after the Middle Fork Bridge, 2 miles to the west, is patched up with giant steel plates and partially opened.

CDOT Region 3 director Jason Schmidt said testing may require some shutdowns on the Lake Fork Bridge, but he expects it to move much faster using techniques learned under duress on the Middle Bridge. He said if significant cracks are found, CDOT will be ready to quickly do repairs.

The department is also getting ahead of a possible Lake Fork Bridge shutdown by preparing a county road as a detour. That road would be in addition to the county road that is serving as a detour for the Middle Bridge.

The Colorado Transportation Commission has already approved $20 million for all the testing and repairs on the two bridges as well as work on dirt-road detours. CDOT has requested another $10 million.

Once the T-1 bridges are fixed, Colorado has hundreds of other bridges in need of repairs. A Federal Highway Administration listing of poor-condition bridges shows that Colorado has 437. Another 5,370 out of 8,954 bridges in the state are considered to be only in fair condition.

“We have to continue to be vigilant,” Cater said.

Inzeo also has a silver-lining attitude toward the devastating U.S. 50 bridge closure.

“The anomalies in the welds have existed since the bridge was originally constructed, and we have 61 years of lived experience and bridge use without issues,” he said. “Still, we are grateful that the inspections have identified these issues before any incident occurred, and the fixes that are now underway will restore the ability of these bridges to carry the traffic that they did before.”

No highway authorities contacted for this article would say that — if the Middle Bridge problem had been found 13 years ago when T-1 steel welds were first definitely identified as a danger, or 2½ years ago when states were put on alert to find and fix T-1 bridges — the crippling closure could have been avoided. They are focused on being thankful that there were no calamitous failures.

BLUE MESA RESERVOIR — Crews will soon begin bolting four 20-foot-long plates of steel to a U.S. 50 bridge over the Blue Mesa Reservoir with the goal of finishing critical repairs by July 4 to allow emergency vehicles and passenger cars across the bridge on an intermittent basis. 

The first phase of repairs will involve attaching the plates of steel to the central span of the bridge, where inspection crews found a four-inch crack in structural steel, Colorado Department of Transportation officials said Tuesday during the first media tour of the bridge since its sudden shutdown April 18.

If construction goes as planned, traffic will be allowed across the bridge two times a day in each direction, said Jason Smith, a regional transportation director for CDOT. 

“Our goal ultimately from day one was getting emergency services across the structure because we realized that communities, especially in Gunnison, needed emergency services in Montrose,” Smith said. 

To prepare for the critical repairs, teams removed asphalt from the bridge to allow more weight, from equipment and crews, to be allowed on the bridge. The four steel plates arrived Saturday and more are in transit, he said.

On Tuesday, amid gusty winds, construction crews worked inside a bright yellow snooper truck over the side of the bridge to continue removing the paint, by sandblasting, to reach the bare metal. Engineers used ultrasonic testing in 118 areas to determine the integrity of the bridge and identify which parts needed repairs.

Crews will have to carefully lower the plates, which weigh the equivalent of two pickup trucks, over the edge, before lifting them to the bottom of the bridge and bolting them in place.

“These plates are pretty massive and will be very difficult to lift over the edge, bring up underneath and bolt into place,” program engineer Rob Beck said.

Over the course of months, crews will drill hundreds of bolts, each weighing about five pounds, into the bridge, he said. 

“There will be a one-for-one replacement. You pull one out, you put one in, pull one out, put one in,” Beck said. “We can’t pull them all out at once or we lose the structural integrity of the plate.”

Smith said CDOT is still working to calculate how many cars the bridge will be able to allow after critical repairs are complete.

“It is very much a balancing act,” he said. 

Once critical repairs are complete, crews will then address less critical issues found on the bridge, to ensure the longevity of the bridge, Smith said, adding that CDOT hopes to finish by the end of October before weather complicates the work.

About 100 people are on site to repair the bridge 24/7, working in shifts, he said.

Gunnison County Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels said the anticipated July 4 opening will help alleviate some stress and anxiety for locals and business owners in the area, especially those working in the tourism industry.

“We have such a huge exchange of commerce, medicine and goods between Gunnison and Montrose. So being cut off there, it’s been really stressful,” she said. 

Since the closure, tourism-based businesses, like campgrounds, have taken a hit with fewer people traveling to the area and canceling their reservations.

“It’s been hard to get the word out to folks that these businesses are open and you can access them,” Puckett Daniels said.

Still, she said she is impressed by the grit shown by people impacted by the closure. 

“There’s been an amazing resilience, watching people step into the gap and help each other — whether it was like shuttling construction workers across Blue Mesa or shuttling students across Blue Mesa or a family who got certified by the school district to be able to drive kids to school, or the EMS system pivoting really quickly and finding treatments for folks in a whole other part of the state,” Puckett Daniels said.

“I’ve been really impressed by how everybody’s put their shoulder to the wheel and helped and pushed in the same direction.”

To build a bowling alley in the city of Brighton north of Denver, developers have to provide four parking spots for every lane — enough to accommodate an alley full of bowlers if none of them carpooled with a friend or family member.

Studio apartments in Brighton require two spots each — even though close to 20% of all renters live alone, according to U.S. census data. That’s the same number that Lone Tree requires for a three-bedroom apartment or single-family home.

Farther down Interstate 25, Greenwood Village requires three spots per bowling lane. But their single-family homes need more parking than Lone Tree’s do — a minimum of three spaces, no matter how many bedrooms the home has.

For decades, cities across the U.S. have required developers to build huge amounts of parking that experts say bears no statistical relationship to how much space residents and consumers actually need for their cars.

“It’s really voodoo and witchcraft, and cities copy-pasting numbers and jacking them up to be extra careful,” said Ben LeRoy, an urban planner who teaches at the University of Illinois. “This is not our profession’s finest moment in terms of rigor and accuracy.”

While convenient for drivers, all that free parking isn’t cheap. Studies show developers spend anywhere from $9,000 to $50,000 per spot in surface lots and garages. That drives up the cost of housing and retail — sometimes preventing apartments and businesses from being built. Parking also takes up scarce land that could have been used to build even more units.

A sea of asphalt is bad for the environment, to boot. So after nearly a century of transportation planners and city land use professionals pushing for more and more parking, experts in the field now say we’ve been building our cities all wrong.

“The tendency has been to just put in way more parking than what is necessary,” said Andy Goetz, a geography professor at the University of Denver who specializes in transportation and urban planning. “In many places, there are requirements for having two, three, four parking spots for every unit of housing — and that’s just way too much.”

In late May, Longmont became the first Colorado city to eliminate minimum parking requirements entirely, giving developers more freedom to decide how many spots their property truly needs. Weeks earlier, Gov. Jared Polis also signed into law House Bill 1304, a measure that will prevent affected cities from requiring minimum levels of parking at multifamily residences built near public transit.

But despite the emerging consensus among planning and transportation experts, reducing or eliminating parking requirements remains a dicey political proposition in a country where driving remains the primary mode of transportation.

The new law was adopted over the opposition of Republicans and many Democrats, who said cities — not the state — should have control over how their communities develop. And in most places, accommodating drivers isn’t optional. Most Colorado neighborhoods and business corridors — including many in Denver — aren’t particularly walkable. Most homes and businesses don’t have convenient access to transit.

Notably, places like Seattle and Buffalo, N.Y., that critics of parking minimums point to as national models, enacted their parking policies at the local level, with support from city council members, local planners and residents.

“(Eliminating parking minimums is) something that might work well in Denver, but harms us in an exurban environment,” Peter Padilla, the mayor pro tem on the Brighton City Council, told state lawmakers in a committee hearing earlier this year.

“The results won’t be fewer cars, just fewer safe places to put them.”

The hidden costs of unused parking

Among urban researchers, the growing body of evidence is clear: U.S. cities have more parking spots than people use.

In 2020, the Regional Transportation District studied parking lot usage in 86 apartment complexes near transit stations across the metro area. At market-rate apartments, 40% of parking spaces were empty at their peak demand. In publicly subsidized housing for low-income residents, half of them went unused.

A similar pattern plays out in cities across the country, in residential lots and commercial ones alike.

All those extra spots make it convenient for drivers to find a space. But while the urban sprawl resulting from the rise of American highways has been well documented, the cost of parking is less widely understood.

A 2021 study of 19 affordable housing projects found that Denver-area developers spent $9.3 million on unused parking over a six-year period — enough to build an additional 40-unit apartment complex.

Parking lots are bad for the environment, contributing to heat islands and generating stormwater runoff. Moreover, environmentalists argue, sprawl is a self-perpetuating cycle. When places are easier to drive and harder to walk, it encourages people to hop in their cars and burn air-polluting fossil fuels that contribute to climate change. In response to rising car traffic and resident demand, cities build more parking spots and wider roads to accommodate more cars.

“We need people to be able to live, work and play in the same area where they actually want to be,” said Rep. Stephanie Vigil, a Colorado Springs Democrat, who sponsored the state parking bill. “And instead we’re requiring that new housing is farther and farther away from all other necessities.

“A lot of this is about disrupting that cycle,” she said. “It’s going to be a little uncomfy. People are nervous about having a parking space. I get that.”

There’s a conservative argument for eliminating parking minimums, too — though it didn’t resonate with suburban and rural Republicans at the statehouse. At its core, it’s a free market solution that allows developers to determine how much parking their commercial or residential property truly needs — or at least what they’re willing to pay for.

Because of that, planners say that fears of builders getting rid of parking entirely to save money are overblown. Risk-averse developers still tend to err on the side of ample parking; in some cases, lenders and big-box store tenants require it.

“We need parking — we all know that we need parking,” said Shaida Libhart, a planner with TEI Engineering and Design in Denver. “It’s just, let’s put our resources and our money into serving everyone instead of (parking spaces) that are sitting vacant for a significant portion of time.”

After Seattle eliminated parking minimums in most transit-oriented neighborhoods in 2012, most developers still built parking — just 40% less of it.

To supporters, that example shows the benefits of a free market approach. Under the policy, developers built 18,000 fewer spaces and saved an estimated $537 million on parking between 2012 and 2017, a peer-reviewed academic study found.

To critics in Colorado, the fact that it worked in Seattle — considered one of the 10 most walkable cities in the U.S. by Walk Score, which factors in transit and bicycle infrastructure — doesn’t mean it makes sense for the Denver suburbs.

“Unfortunately, public transit in Colorado is nowhere near where we need it to be if we expect people to get rid of their cars,” Beverly Stables, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League, testified in opposition to the bill.

City policies lag as guidance evolves

The high financial cost of parking has long been understood.

In a 1959 ruling that was later reversed, the Colorado Supreme Court found that municipal parking requirements were an unconstitutional taking of property, meaning cities should compensate property owners for the cost.

Today, a number of Colorado cities have ordinances on the books allowing parking waivers for affordable housing projects — an acknowledgement that the cost of parking is at odds with affordability.

So why do cities continue to require more parking than their residents and visitors need?

For much of the country’s history, the city planning profession preached the exact opposite of what it advocates today.

Minimum parking rules first emerged in the 1920s, when new motorcars began to crowd American streets. For decades, the Institute of Transportation Engineers published manuals guiding cities on how much was needed. It wasn’t until 2005, with the release of the book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” that planners say the idea of eliminating parking minimums started to take hold.

Today, the ITE president opposes parking minimums, saying their costs outweigh their benefits. So does the American Planning Association.

But the emerging expert consensus hasn’t translated into widespread policy changes.

LeRoy says outdated guidance from the transportation engineers still serves as the basis for many municipal codes. And cities didn’t even apply that consistently. A golf course in Brighton for instance, requires double the parking as one built in Lone Tree. A spokesperson for the city of Brighton did not respond this week to an email seeking comment about their parking policies.

A bigger barrier to change is political. Most residents own cars. And no one enjoys circling the block repeatedly for parking.

“The best thing you can say about minimum parking requirements is that they are a politically popular policy tool,” said LeRoy, a former city planner for Champaign, Illinois. “I don’t discount that that is what politicians and voters often want. The challenge to us as planning professionals is to continue to do a better job of explaining why minimum parking requirements might actually work against the electorate’s preferences.”

But in advocating for statewide pre-emption, some planners — including the Colorado branch of the APA — have taken a different approach.

“I think a statewide movement was kind of needed because we were having a lot of difficulty in local jurisdictions making some of those big steps forward,” Libhart said.

The state law blocks parking requirements for multifamily housing and mixed-use residential projects. But it only applies in cities within a metropolitan planning organization near qualifying transit stops.

Longmont will be a testing ground for more sweeping change. It eliminates minimums citywide, for all new development. And it institutes new residential parking maximums, allowing no more than 2 spaces per home.

“While city staff recognize that people own cars and need places to store them, not everyone chooses to own a car or can afford one,” Ben Ortiz, a Longmont city transportation planner, said in a statement. “For these individuals, eliminating minimum parking requirements will be particularly beneficial, as the cost of parking increases the costs of goods, services, and housing for everyone, including those who do not drive.”

The council vote was unanimous — but not without backlash.

“I would like to speak on behalf of the vast, vast majority that use cars to get around,” Longmont resident Gary Hodges told the City Council before its vote to eliminate parking minimums. “We are a car-centric society — that’s just a fundamental truth, and we’re not getting away from that.”

But even in Longmont, experts say don’t expect developers to suddenly stop building parking.

“Developers don’t want to build something that people don’t want to buy,” said Libhart, who co-chairs the legislative committee for the Colorado APA chapter.

Those looking for a long scenic drive through Colorado now have more options after heavy snow has been cleared from several scenic mountain passes. 

Independence Pass

Independence Pass, a quintessential scenic byway that connects Aspen to Twin Lakes, is open for the 2024 summer season. The pass which “almost always” opens the Thursday before Memorial Day saw its opening day pushed back to May 31 to allow crews to clear snow from winter and late spring storms, conduct avalanche mitigation and repair a 5-foot-by-7-foot sinkhole, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. 

The steep and narrow 32-mile pass twists and turns around aspen groves and hugs the Roaring Fork River before peaking in the windblown tundra of Colorado’s alpine. It tops out at 12,095 feet along the Continental Divide. 

The pass also crosses through three federally designated wilderness areas — Hunter-Fryingpan, Collegiate Peaks and Mount Massive — and has several campgrounds and trailheads. 

About 1,400 cars travel over the pass between Twin Lakes and Aspen each day, according to CDOT. 

Guanella Pass

Guanella Pass, another scenic byway that climbs from Georgetown to Grant is also open for the summer. As the 24-mile pass climbs above treeline, drivers can catch a glimpse of several mountain peaks, including fourteeners Mount Bierstadt and Mount Blue Sky, and the 13,743-foot Argentine Peak. Guanella Pass ambles through two national forests on its way from I-70 to U.S. 285 and climbs to an elevation of 11,670 feet in 12 miles. 

Trail Ridge Road

Trail Ridge Road, which winds through Rocky Mountain National Park to connect Estes Park and Grand Lake, opened May 31. The road historically opens Memorial Day weekend, but May storms with significant winds at higher elevations hampered snow plowing operations, spokesperson Kyle Patterson said. 

Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved road in the U.S. and climbs to 12,183 feet. The latest the road has ever opened was June 26, 1943, Patterson said. 

Because road conditions along the high-altitude road can change quickly, the national park recommends visitors be prepared to adjust travel plans at any time and are encouraged to call the park to check the road’s conditions at 970-586-1222.

Colorado 5

Colorado 5 is also open for the season for those looking to drive up to the 14,130-foot summit of Mount Blue Sky. 

Kebler Pass

Kebler Pass opened May 31, giving an alternate route for those traveling between Gunnison, Montrose and Lake City after the U.S. 50 bridge shutdown. Sheep herds that are often accompanied by working sheepdogs graze on the high mountain pass, which reaches 10,007 feet. Officials urge drivers to not interact with the livestock guardian dogs while they do their jobs to protect the herds. 

As of Friday, crews with Gunnison County spent 2,992 hours preparing Kebler this year, including 500 hours of overtime, to clear the snow and place gravel over the road, said Martin Schmidt with the county’s public works department. The county has spent about $325,000, which is about 10% over budget, to keep the 33-mile pass in good condition for the increased flow in traffic. 

Schmidt said he expects there will be more costs. 

While the pass gives another option for those impacted by the Blue Mesa bridge closure, it’s not a viable route for high amounts of traffic or heavy trucks, he said. 

“The biggest benefit is that the road is open 24 hours a day,” he said, “but it is still a high mountain pass with tight, winding corners, no cell service, and variable weather conditions.”