David Sachs
David cut his teeth covering transportation, development, politics, education, and art in D.C. He's covered sustainable transportation for Streetsblog since 2015 and has lived in Denver's Cheesman Park neighborhood since 2012.
Recent Posts
BikeDenver Searching for a New Director to the Lead Fight for a Bikeable City
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BikeDenver is the city’s top advocacy group for people on bikes. Its staff pushes decision makers to make streets safe and convenient for cycling as transportation. Now the organization is looking for someone new to lead it. Might that person be you? BikeDenver’s Board of Directors announced last week that it’s going national with its search. Here’s a brief job description: The Executive […]
6 Streets and 5 Intersections in Serious Need of Safer Bike Infrastructure
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The City of Denver released reams of information when Mayor Michael Hancock committed to ending traffic fatalities, including some long awaited data on bike safety. Streetsblog is combing through it all — let’s start with the streets and intersections where people on bikes are getting hurt the most. From 2008 to 2012, there were 1,325 reported bike crashes in […]
John Hickenlooper Learned Years Ago That Wider Highways Don’t Fix Traffic
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When Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper was Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, he learned that more lanes for cars don’t fix congestion — it just enables more cars to fill up the highway. Hickenlooper got the lesson in “induced demand” from all-star city planner Jeff Speck, the author of Walkable City, in 2004. Speck was in town for the Mayor’s […]
Wheelchair Users to City Council: We Need Sidewalks to Live Life
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Stewart Tucker Lundy uses a wheelchair to travel Denver’s streets. On Wednesday, he wanted the City Council to understand how shoddy, slippery, and altogether nonexistent sidewalks affect him and others who can’t walk, so he described his plight from a windshield perspective. He asked council members to recall last week, when a rockslide closed part of I-70 in Glenwood Canyon. […]
The One Person Who Can Stop the I-70 Widening Is John Hickenlooper
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While Colorado DOT seems hell-bent on spending billions of dollars to widen I-70, it’s not too late to stop the project. If Governor John Hickenlooper says the word, the city can still escape unscathed from the state’s efforts to ram a super-wide below-grade highway through north Denver. Going through with the highway widening will have long-lasting consequences, saddling the […]
Denver Has a New App That Shows The Best Way to Get Around
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Today Mayor Michael Hancock and Transportation Director Crissy Fanganello introduced the Go Denver app, which lets people sort their trip options by cost, speed, and environmental impact before choosing how to travel. It’ll tell you how many calories each option burns too. The app compares several choices: Transit (with real-time data from RTD), walking, and biking […]
What the Broncos Parade Says About Denver’s Transit System
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Compared to a typical weekday, about 90,000 more people rode RTD trains and buses on the Tuesday of the Broncos Super Bowl parade. Ridership ballooned 28 percent, giving Denver’s transit system its busiest day ever with 409,000 boardings. To deal with the demand, RTD added service to several rail and bus lines, but also had to detour bus routes that […]
Affordable Housing Advocate: CDOT Must Pay for Impact of I-70 Widening
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Most DOTs will tell you it’s their job to build roads and highways, plain and simple. Whatever gets in the way of that, well, that’s not their problem. In the case of Colorado DOT’s I-70 expansion, it’s residents of Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea who are in the way. At the project’s onset, CDOT will bulldoze 56 homes and 18 […]
Road Builders Want to Subsidize Driving By Making Other Stuff Cost More
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The Colorado Contractors Association wants to raise the state sales sales tax to pay for roads (and maybe some transit, but definitely roads). The CCA wants to get the tax proposal on the November ballot. In other words, everyone will pay more for consumer goods in order to subsidize driving. Basics like clothing will get more expensive […]
Mayor Hancock Commits to Ending Traffic Deaths, Serious Injuries in Denver
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Last year, 57 people were killed in traffic on Denver’s streets, and hundreds more suffer life-altering injuries. Per capita, our traffic death rate is twice as high as Seattle’s, and traffic crashes are “the number one cause of morbidity and mortality related to trauma in our community,” according to Denver Health Director of Emergency Medicine Christopher Caldwell. Mayor Michael […]
BikeDenver and Executive Director Molly North to Part Ways
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BikeDenver Executive Director Molly North will leave the city’s bike advocacy group on Friday, according to a statement from Mark Chapman, president of BikeDenver’s Board of Directors. Piep van Heuven, who led BikeDenver from 2008 to 2013, will hold the reins until the board hires a permanent replacement in May. “I’ve had an incredible ride […]
RTD Director Menten: $15 Million for Transit? No Thanks, Spend It on Roads
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You’d think the leaders of RTD would want to shepherd the Denver area’s transit system into the modern era, but RTD board member Natalie Menten would rather see Colorado transportation dollars go toward highways than transit. Menten, who represents parts of Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, and Golden, told Complete Colorado that transit doesn’t deserve the $15 million […]