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
Randy Baumgardner: Biking and Walking Should Get Table Scraps
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Governor John Hickenlooper’s $100 million, four-year commitment to biking and walking represents just 2.5 percent of the state’s transportation budget, but it promises to make a big difference for cities and towns throughout Colorado. Not surprisingly, however, the idea of using transportation resources to improve street safety, help people get more physical activity, and make more efficient use […]
No, Making Quebec Street More Like a Highway Is Not a Good Idea
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Greater Park Hill published a rant from Dennis Royer today in which the former Denver Public Works traffic engineer picked apart the Quebec Street widening, but not for the right reasons. If DPW gets its way, Quebec will go from two lanes to four, with highway-sized lanes between 6th and 26th Avenue. That’s not enough for Royer, who laments the fact […]
Hancock Makes Room for Colfax BRT in 2016 Budget
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Denver has studied bus rapid transit (BRT) on East Colfax Avenue for a long time, and now it looks like the city is ready to take concrete steps to make it happen. Mayor Michael Hancock’s budget sets aside $1.2 million to design the BRT route, which would connect downtown Denver with Aurora over a nine-mile span. […]
Denver Can Grow Without Getting Overrun By Traffic, If We Act Now
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Westword commentator Bree Davies sometimes writes fierce, nostalgic critiques of how Denver is growing, and what it means when your hometown’s identity is changing from an intimate, small city to a fast-developing one attracting young professionals from across the country. Sometimes she loathes change, like the squeezes Denver’s growing population puts on city streets. But after a trip to Los Angeles, […]
How Seattle’s Mayor Handled a Bike Lane Spat Without Sacrificing Safety
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On Tuesday, the Boulder City Council officially caved to opponents of a safer street design and voted to renege on the Folsom Street protected bike lane and road diet. We learned that the city’s elected officials only support safe, bikeable streets when it’s comfortable for them, and it doesn’t take much to make them uncomfortable. Speeding — and therefore […]
Why WalkDenver’s Tactical Urbanism Projects Matter
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Denver is just beginning to recover from decades of car-first planning. Making the city walkable will take big changes, like a legitimate way to fund a sidewalk network and a much more aggressive approach to reducing traffic deaths and serious injuries on our streets. Campaigns like those are marathons. They take years to unfold and change the […]
Coloradans Are Driving Less, But Agencies Keep Spending on Expanding Roads
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People in the Southwest are driving less and using transit more, but transportation spending doesn’t reflect those trends, according to a new report from the Southwestern Energy Efficiency Project. Instead state DOTs are building more roads, as though nothing has changed. Meanwhile regional transportation agencies like the Denver Regional Council of Governments aren’t spending enough on […]
Will Denver’s Leaders Stick With the Broadway Bike Lane in Crunch Time?
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On Friday, Denver Public Works and BikeDenver showed the city how converting one motor vehicle lane to a protected bike lane on Broadway could improve safety for everyone who uses the street. The temporary, three-day demo was the beginning of a larger bid to give people on bikes a safe north-south route through the city, and make Broadway less of a […]
Eyes on the Street: Broadway Gets a Pop-Up Protected Bike Lane
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Today marked the first visible step in what could be Denver’s most important bike infrastructure project: a protected, two-way bike lane that runs north to south on Broadway. This morning, Mayor Michael Hancock, the Department of Public Works, BikeDenver, and South Broadway merchants launched a temporary version of the bike lane between 1st Avenue and Bayaud Street to show people the […]
Northeast Walk Fest Connects Neighborhoods Plagued by Dangerous Streets
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A while back Streetsblog Denver profiled a pretty stellar organization, Walk2Connect, which helps create a cultural impetus for more walkable neighborhoods in Denver. Walk2Connect plants the seeds for walkable streets by — get this — walking the streets. The idea is that when residents actively observe their poorly designed walking environment, they realize how unacceptable it is. Walk2Connect then […]
This Weekend: See What Broadway Would Be Like With a Protected Bike Lane
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Broadway serves different functions for different people. It’s a Main Street for residents of Baker, Athmar Park, Golden Triangle, and West Wash Park, and a shopping and nightlife destination for everyone in the city. It’s also Denver’s most important north-south transportation link, which is why planners call it “Denver’s spine.” Yet Broadway’s design caters mostly to drivers […]
Hancock Administration Poised to Adopt Vision Zero Plan
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Denver Public Works Transportation Director Crissy Fanganello told the City Council Tuesday that her agency will create a Vision Zero plan — a roadmap to eliminate traffic deaths — as long as the council approves the allocations in Mayor Michael Hancock’s 2016 budget. The news came during a presentation on DPW’s budget, which includes $350,000 to create the plan […]