People-friendly streets are climate-friendly, too

When the City of Denver went under stay-at-home orders in March, people’s transportation habits, and especially their driving, changed dramatically. Many office workers were able to transition to working from home, and folks haven’t been making many other trips they usually would. Lower traffic volume’s impact has been clear—we’re seeing lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Denver and the Front Range. This isn’t a coincidence. Transportation is one of the top two contributors to GHG emissions in the United States. Air quality in Denver has improved in this period, showing that transportation clearly plays a significant role in Denver’s notorious brown cloud and other ozone problems. But it shouldn’t take a pandemic to improve our air quality and reduce our carbon footprint. We have to do some real work reducing vehicle trips in Denver throughout and after this crisis. It’s time to commit.

In a white paper, Erin Nobler and Wes Marshall at the University of Colorado Denver, explored several strategies for reducing GHG emissions from transportation that Denver can implement right now. If all of the strategies were implemented, Denver could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30%. The strategies are particularly powerful in combination, because they tie together the goals of disincentivizing driving while providing efficient and equitable transportation options.

Rightsizing parking fees would not only ensure drivers pay adequately toward the actual cost of maintaining and providing parking, but would also discourage driving and help fund other transportation options. Similarly, congestion pricing would allow Denver to collect revenue from peak traffic, and would lead to some drivers choosing not to be a part of that traffic. Prioritizing transit includes both reallocating street space for dedicated bus lanes and investing in more frequent service. Together these changes would make transit the more desirable option as it is in most world-class cities, allowing people who previously drove to opt out of congestion entirely. As Nobler’s and Marshall’s analysis shows, increases in transit boardings can be directly related with reduced greenhouse gas emissions if fewer people drive for single-occupancy vehicle trips, too. In fact, buses are much more efficient than car trips: even a bus that is a quarter full emits less carbon dioxide than a single-occupancy car trip.

Many essential workers and others who can’t work from home haven’t stopped riding transit since the pandemic took hold in the United States. Transit needs to work for them and for others who are just starting to return to work, too. Especially in this time of physical distancing, more frequent buses and trains can mean fewer people on each vehicle. After the pandemic is brought under control, the extra vehicle space can be used to expand capacity so that more people can easily change their transportation habits and travel using regular, reliable transit service. Funding is also needed to make transit free or low-cost, at least for youth, seniors and low-income populations. RTD fares are significantly higher than most cities in the United States right now. This is not equitable. Lowering or eliminating fares serves a dual purpose of becoming more accessible for riders who rely on transit, and makes it a more cost-effective option than driving for those who can make the switch.

Erin Nobler touches on housing in her article for Streetsblog and we feel it is important to address it here as well: equitable and efficient transportation is a housing policy issue, too. People who can’t afford or are unable to drive cars have the most to lose if overly restrictive zoning and increasing housing costs force them to live further away from work and resources. While the City moves to encourage people to use transit and active transportation for their trips, we need to ensure that we are prioritizing people that have always done so out of necessity first. Their gains are everyone’s gains. Ensuring that lower-income residents can live near—and safely access—transit while encouraging more people to use it will reduce traffic volume, increase safety of vulnerable road users and reduce our collective climate footprint.

The Denver Climate Task Force is currently working to recommend policies and solutions to the City that we need to meet our climate goals. The Denver Streets Partnership is calling on the Climate Task Force to make these transportation solutions a major focus of their final recommendations. Denver must focus on transportation if we want to get serious about reducing Denver’s ozone problem and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Some conscientious individual residents of Denver might choose to move away from single-occupancy car trips to transit and active transportation on their own. However, relying on individuals to change behavior just won’t get us there. Denver public policy must lead to the outcomes we desire by making low or zero-emission transportation the FIRST choice.