Transportation Funding
Want safe sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus service that’s frequent and reliable? We do too! That’s why we advocate for the dollars to build out complete citywide bike, pedestrian and bus networks.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
Sidewalk Funding
In 2022, Denver voters approved the Denver Deserves Sidewalks citizen-initiated ballot measure sponsored by the Denver Streets Partnership. This new property fee, which the City will start collecting in 2025, will generate an estimated $40 million per year, allowing Denver to create a comprehensive program to repair hazardous sidewalks, reconstruct sidewalks that are deficient, and build sidewalks where they’re missing.
Transit Funding
In 2022, the Denver Streets Partnership joined with a coalition of partners to launch the Alliance to Transform Transportation, which is advocating to significantly expand the dollars going into travel options in the Denver region with a focus on building a transit system that equitably reduces air pollution, tackles climate change, saves lives, increases affordability, and expands access to opportunities including work and education. Significantly expanding transit means billions of dollars – similar in size to FasTracks in 2004 (that was about $5 billion). This will require identifying and securing a lot more new, sustainable money, as well as shifting dollars away from dirty and dangerous highway expansion projects.
Thanks to our advocacy, in 2024 the state legislature passed SB24-230, which generates new funding — an estimated $138 million annually — from a fee on oil and gas production to reduce air pollution. Eighty percent of the revenues will go to transit and the remaining 20% will be dedicated to Colorado wildlife and parks. Of the funding dedicated to transit, 70% of that is for transit operations—funding to improve service frequency and reliability. We need substantially more funding to increase transit service in the Denver region to the levels needed to meet our climate and air quality goals, but this is a pretty sizable step in the right direction.
Denver's Annual Budget
The Denver Streets Partnership (DSP) first came together in 2016 as an informal coalition of bike, pedestrian, and transit advocates to collectively advocate for increased funding for multimodal transportation. At that time, Denver was only dedicating about $5 million per year to pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects. Since than, annual funding for transit, walking, biking, and Vision Zero projects has increased to about $20 million per year. Part of this increase in dedicated funding is thanks to a Transportation and Mobility Special Revenue Fund that the City established in 2022 with revenues from an increase in parking meter fees from $1 to $2 per hour. Annual funding still falls well short of what’s needed to build out complete pedestrian, bicycle, and transit networks throughout Denver, however.
Climate Protection Fund
In 2020, Denverite voters passed Ballot Initiative 2A. raising the local sales and use tax by 0.25% to create the Climate Protection Fund (CPF). The CPF raises $40M annually to act urgently to mitigate the causes of climate change and to center that work on equity. Allowable uses of the fund include programs and services that provide affordable, clean, safe and reliable transportation choices, like walking, biking, transit, electric vehicles, and neighborhood-scale transit.
To date the fund has supported Denver’s wildly successful e-bike rebate program, as well as smaller pilot programs such as the E-Bikes for Deliveries and Bicycling Rewards Program led by the Denver Streets Partnership.
State of Transportation Report
Elevate Denver Bond
Related Resources
Where Johnston’s proposed budget falls short and what we can do next
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