Are the Roads Working This Week? No.

A recent backup on I-25. Image via Jayson Luber/Twitter
A recent backup on I-25. Image via Jayson Luber/Twitter

In this installment of “Are the Roads Working This Week?” we turn to Denver7 traffic reporter Jayson Luber’s Twitter account. Luber keeps tabs on the morning driving commute every day. And just about every day, it seems, he has another case of bumper to bumper traffic to tell us about.

Luber’s day starts early, when the freeways — designed to accommodate the busiest couple of hours in the day — are nearly empty. His daily tweets usually begin like so:

Later in the day, inevitably, Luber informs his followers that one crash has backed up drivers for miles.

Sometimes the roads don’t work well because the sun comes out:

Streetsblog started this series because of a double standard in Denver media that treats life-altering and traffic-inducing car crashes as the daily costs of doing business (not a solvable problem caused by policies that prioritize cheap driving). Transit snafus, meanwhile, especially on the A-Line, are treated as an indictment of an entire mode of travel.

Between Monday and Tuesday, the Denver Police Department investigated 118 traffic crashes that resulted in one death and 10 injuries. Many tears and traffic jams later, nobody has died or been injured using transit during that time. RTD’s rail lines have experienced one notable delay this week, a 15-minute delay on the E-Line early this morning, according to RTD rider alerts. At least Luber gives some kind of props to transit:

To submit an entry to the “Are the Roads Working?” series, email us or drop a note on Streetsblog Denver’s Facebook or Twitter pages. Use the hashtag #CarsAreTraffic.

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