Northeast Denver is booming.
The airport has grown to one of the busiest in the world.
Fertile fields are now subdivisions full of single-family houses.
While several Denver schools have closed because of declining enrollment, northeast Denver needs a new elementary school building.
Peña Boulevard, the area’s most direct thoroughfare, feels the strain.
Denver’s City Council was right to allocate $15 million to study the widening of Peña Boulevard — which is now a two-lane divided freeway — and begin the early stages of design.
However, the city should look long and hard at the alternatives presented by Peak Consulting at the end of the five-year study. While traffic on the road has ballooned to an average of 135,000 cars per day, there are two other transit corridors that are not at capacity.
First, the enterprise-operated toll road E-470 is a three-lane divided highway that runs parallel to Peña Boulevard until they meet just a few miles from Denver International Airport. The third lane is new and part of a $350 million expansion started in 2022. The eastern section of Peña between the E-470 intersection and the airport has already been widened and improved by the Denver International Airport. The one-way trip from Interstate 70 to the airport on the toll road costs $2.65 with a toll pass and $4.25 without. It’s more if users get on the toll road earlier.
Second, the A-line train run by the Regional Transportation District from downtown’s Union Station to the airport’s terminal is not at full capacity despite offering a consistent service every 15 minutes during most times of the day, and 30 minutes in the very early morning hours. The one-way trip costs $10.
For $15 million, Peak Consulting needs to look at these two alternatives to widening Peña Boulevard. Forcing traffic patterns onto those other two routes could save money and help the environment.
This is not the “war on cars” that Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn fears, nor is it “crazyland” where Councilwoman Sarah Parady fears we’re ignoring the threat of climate change.
Rather, this is looking for the most cost-effective way to get folks to and from the airport while acknowledging the obvious benefits for the environment if that route is an electric public transit system already built.
Adding a toll to Peña Boulevard would be wildly unpopular but would likely push more users in eastern Aurora and eastern Centennial onto the faster E-470 route even when they have time to spare. Increasing the price of parking at the airport or adding free secure parking at light rail and commuter rail stops would push or pull more users to the train.
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These alternatives have some obvious hurdles. RTD cannot increase service frequency on the A-line without major investment because the commuter train shares portions of the tracks with commercial trains. The E-470 authority, while managed by local elected officials, could be reluctant to cut a deal that ends the flow of $287 million of revenue every year. And no one wants another toll road to get to the airport.
The expansion of Peña Boulevard will be expensive; could these alternatives save money and the environment?
We won’t know unless Peak Consulting includes them in their study.
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