It has been six years since Denver adopted its Vision Zero Action Plan in 2017 and committed to the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries by the year 2030. Since then, traffic fatalities have only gone up, from 51 people killed in 2017 to a high of 84 people killed in both 2021 and 2022. Denver is not alone; traffic fatalities have been increasing at an alarming rate across the country. Faced with these dispiriting numbers it may be tempting to declare Vision Zero a failure and refocus on goals that feel more attainable. But a closer look at the data actually points us in the opposite direction. Instead of giving up on Vision Zero, Denver should dramatically scale up its efforts to improve traffic safety, both in terms of changes to our streets and the level of funding dedicated to the cause. Not only is it the morally right thing to do—no one should die just trying to get around Denver—but also holds the promise of a massive return on investment.
Traffic violence is a systemic issue. Our city streets are designed to move as many cars as quickly as possible, which is directly at odds with safety. Traffic crashes are preventable, but it’s going to take more than isolated, spot improvements to fully address this systemic problem. Take for example the changes the City made to 15 intersections on East Colfax Avenue in early 2020. Using low-cost materials like paint and plastic posts, the City added treatments including bulb-outs at the corners, pedestrian median refuge islands, and turning restrictions, all aimed at slowing drivers and shortening pedestrian crossing distances. Safety did actually improve at each of these intersections—observational data showed that drivers are now more likely to go the speed limit and yield to pedestrians.
As encouraging as these improvements are, however, they are not nearly enough. Colfax Avenue stretches nine miles across Denver, with more than 150 intersections along the way. With five or more lanes along the entire length designed to facilitate vehicular movement, the street functions more like a racetrack than the bustling residential and business corridor that it is. It’s not surprising, therefore, that minor changes at just 10% of the intersections have not put much of a dent in the traffic fatality rate on this corridor. Thirty-six people have been killed on Colfax Avenue since Denver adopted Vision Zero, and Colfax is just one of 27 streets in Denver’s High Injury Network, the majority of which are also high-speed arterials like Colorado Boulevard, Federal Boulevard, and Sheridan Boulevard.
As we explained in our 2022 Vision Zero Call to Action, what’s needed is a much larger scale, more fundamental transformation that completely changes the overall character of these streets. One prime example of this type of overhaul is the bus rapid transit (BRT) project planned for East Colfax. By reallocating a significant amount of street space away from cars, Colfax BRT will reinforce slower, safer speeds along the entire route. The increased speed, convenience, and reliability of BRT will also attract a substantial number of people out of their cars altogether and onto transit—one of the safest ways of getting around. The remaining drivers and people walking and rolling along the corridor will experience a safer, calmer, and more comfortable Colfax. The effectiveness of a transit-centered approach to improving traffic safety has already been demonstrated in Seattle, a city similar in size to Denver. Seattle has invested heavily in bus transit improvements over the last several years, and now averages only 28 traffic fatalities per year, about a third of Denver’s fatality rate.
The entire BRT network envisioned in the City’s recently released Denver Moves Everyone plan overlaps with much of the High Injury Network, and therefore building out this network would go a long way toward actually eliminating traffic fatalities throughout Denver. According to the plan, completing the full BRT network would require spending $170 million per year between now and 2050, compared to an average of only $7.2 million per year that the City has allocated to transit between 2017 and 2021. These numbers underscore a basic fact—the City is dramatically underfunding multimodal transportation today. If Denver is serious about creating a safe and livable city, we need more funding now.
$170 million per year might seem like a lot, but consider the benefit of this investment in terms of saving lives. Although it feels crude to put a monetary value on human life, governments do it all the time when deciding whether the benefits of a transportation project are worth the cost. The US Department of Transportation currently estimates the “Value of a Statistical Life”—i.e., the economic value of reducing the risk that one life will be lost—is $12.5 million. By this math, the economic value of reducing the risk that 84 lives will be lost in traffic fatalities each year is just over one billion dollars. From an economic perspective, spending $170 million per year to achieve up to a $1 billion annual benefit is a great deal.
When there are proven actions that could save Denverites from dying predictable, preventable deaths, and the cost-benefit analysis is so clear, it is our responsibility as a community to prioritize and aggressively pursue these actions. Humanity demands this of us. Our neighbors—riding their bikes to work, driving to appointments, taking transit to meet loved ones, walking to a restaurant with friends—all deserve to be able to get where they’re going safely. When we invest in Vision Zero infrastructure changes and transit, we’re building for people, those for whom the city exists. We envision a Denver where our city streets build community and connect us to things that matter, not cause harm and remind us of tragedy.
The Denver Streets Partnership and our coalition of community partners therefore call upon our current and newly elected leaders to raise the scale of funding needed to actually eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Denver. We know the task is daunting, but a better, safer, more connected Denver is within reach, and we stand ready to support our leaders in rising to meet the moment.