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
Detractors of Hickenlooper’s Bike Plan Want to Hold Colorado Back
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Two camps emerged after Governor John Hickenlooper announced that the state will invest more than $100 million in making Colorado better for biking and walking: those who saw the bid as a way to expand travel choices while reducing traffic injuries and deaths, and those who viewed it as a threat to the idea that all transportation dollars should be spent […]
Eyes on the Street: Denver Park(ing) Day 2015 in Pictures
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Once a year, Park(ing) Day offers a glimpse of what streets might look like if cities reallocated public space that’s usually reserved for automobiles to benefit people. Today is that day. So Denverites took to the streets and temporarily transformed metered parking spots into outdoor living rooms, game rooms, dining rooms — places to interact with one another. […]
DPW’s Big Idea for Denver’s Next Great Walkable Neighborhood: Widen Roads
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Denver’s ABC affiliate, 7News, has a very cleverly titled column called “Driving You Crazy” (it’s mostly about what makes drivers crazy — get it?). Sometimes traffic reporter Jayson Luber wanders into transit territory — like when he empathized with a reader who can’t stand “gabby females” on the No. 15 bus. But mostly Luber hands a megaphone to motorists enraged over […]
Gov’s $100M Commitment to Safer Streets Is About More Than Money
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Governor John Hickenlooper’s announcement that Colorado will invest more than $100 million over four years in bike and pedestrian infrastructure was bold, and not just because that money can go a long way. Along with committing 2.5 percent of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s budget to bike and pedestrian projects, Hickenlooper appears intent on strategically reorienting the agency toward a […]
Denver’s Largest Neighborhood Coalition Demands Vision Zero
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Denver’s Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation, a group that represents about 100 neighborhoods throughout the city, just adopted a transportation platform [PDF] that petitions, among other things, for Vision Zero. The platform should send a message to Mayor Michael Hancock’s office: The city must acknowledge that traffic deaths and serious injuries are unacceptable and develop a Vision Zero strategy to prevent them. Here’s some pretty strong […]
Why the Car Is No Longer a Symbol of Freedom and Adventure in the West
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Tim Sullivan is a Salt Lake City planner and author who traversed the western United States via bike, bus, train, and foot in order to write “Ways to the West: How Getting Out of Our Cars Is Reclaiming America’s Frontier.” Sullivan loves the sense of freedom and independence of the West — a concept a lot of […]
Hancock’s Budget Nods at Vision Zero, Better Streets, But No Guarantees Yet
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Today Mayor Michael Hancock proposed his 2016 budget, giving a glimpse of what the city will prioritize next year. The document [PDF] places more importance on creating people-oriented streets than it has in previous years, but the investments don’t indicate a paradigm shift to a 21st-century transportation mindset. That idea is best illustrated in Hancock’s note to the public (the […]
Raising EcoPass Cost Without Good Data Could Hurt Ridership, Accessibility
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Business owners and transit advocates are upset with RTD for a proposal that would raise the price of the transit agency’s business EcoPass, a heavily discounted employer-sponsored fare card, by about 18.3 percent. Businesses don’t like the hike because it hurts their bottom line, but the real concern is that it could hurt accessibility and dwindle ridership. The increase is […]
Saturday’s Tour de Fat Is a Party to Benefit Sustainable Transportation
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Just two days left until New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat festival. Two days until thousands of people on bikes take to City Park clad in overalls and Speedos and sombreros and banana suits and shark masks and… everything imaginable, really. Tour de Fat is a party. It’s probably Denver’s best party. But it’s also a way to get more […]
Denver’s Suburbs Have Better Policies for Walking Infrastructure Than Denver
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By all accounts, Denver is experiencing a cultural and economic renaissance that has made it the Millennial Mecca of the West. You’d think its streets would reflect that. Yet despite its status as Colorado’s urban center, some of Denver’s suburbs have a better grip on how to fund safe streets than the city itself. Last week’s report from Mile High […]
Mayor Hancock, City Council Have No Excuse to Shortchange Transit
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Mayor Michael Hancock has been quick to tout Denver’s status as a post-recession boom town, but not so quick to use the city’s bulging purse to fund transit and active transportation. That should change, if elected officials follow through on their recently announced budget priorities. According to the City Council’s budget priorities, “transit infrastructure and safety” top the list. The City […]
Watch Advocates Transform West Colfax Into a Place for People
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Here’s a cool video from the Reimagine West Colfax event last month that converted West Colfax Avenue from a street designed strictly for cars into a place for people to gather, walk, and bike safely. The above time lapse shows volunteers constructing a parklet — a miniature gathering place reclaimed from traffic lanes or parking spaces — from […]