Denver street safety advocates support Bus Rapid Transit on Colorado Blvd.

Community members who both oppose and support the Bus Rapid Transit(BRT) project on Colorado Blvd. agree with the Colorado Department of Transportation's recent decision to take a couple years to study the project on Colfax before moving forward, but supporters also warn of the consequences of waiting too long. 

"The longer we delay, the more people are going to be killed and injured on the street that we know is dangerous," Jill Locantore told CBS Colorado. 

Locantore is the executive director of the Denver Streets Partnership, and is urging CDOT to move forward with its plans for BRT.

"Bus rapid transit is exactly the kind of transformation we need to make the corridor work better for everybody," she said. 

According to a CDOT report, in the four year span from 2018- 2022, 89 crashes on Colorado Blvd. resulted in a fatality or serious injury. She believes a dedicated lane for buses would help reduce those numbers. 

"Also by reducing the number of general purpose travel lanes, that actually has a big improvement on safety by reinforcing safer, slower speeds along the corridor," said Locantore. 

CDOT recently announced it's moving away from the possibility of implementing a center lane for buses, but another option using side-running lanes would increase travel times by 40% according to the department's projections. For Locantore, that's a good thing. 

"Currently, people drive like it's a highway at very high, dangerous speeds, precisely because it's designed like a highway," she added.

While CDOT owns the land and is therefore in charge of the project and any changes to infrastructure, RTD would be the operator, and supports CDOT's BRT efforts. They point to the project on Colfax as early proof of some success. 

"Colfax is a great example where it's actually likely going to take RTD fewer busses to run faster frequencies because the BRT on Colfax is so much faster than it was previously, so we can use fewer buses to provide even faster headways," said Kiernan Maletsky, RTD's director of long-range planning. 

The city of Glendale and a host of community members from neighborhoods all along Colorado Blvd. oppose the project for its potential negative impacts and are hosting a community forum this evening to discuss it. They told CBS Colorado that CDOT, DOTI and others originally agreed to attend but have since pulled out. RTD also declined an invite.