The city of Denver plans to run a new two-way bike path along a lengthy stretch of Broadway, replacing another automobile lane as it tries to open up the busy corridor to new users.

The project, which is under design now, marks a significant expansion of the city’s current bike-lane experiment on Broadway and the local government’s larger ambitions for bikes and pedestrians.

Here’s the plan

Much of Broadway is a rushing one-way thoroughfare crammed with cars. In 2016, that started to change: The city installed a half-mile of two-way bike lanes along one side of the road just south of downtown. It also banned cars from Broadway’s bus lane.

The new bike lanes prompted some cranky complaints from some travelers and celebration from others. Two years on, though, planners say the experiment was a success.

Now, the city will make the lanes permanent and longer, along with other changes along about 1.5 miles of the road. The two-way bike area will start at 7th Avenue, extend south across Cherry Creek, and reach all the way to Center Avenue.

City staff expect the project will take about a year and $1.1 million to design. The city already has set aside $12 million from the recent bonds package to build it.

Besides the two-way dedicated bike lanes, “those improvements include complete intersection reconstruction, new traffic signals, as well as new pedestrian ramps,” said senior city planner Dan Raine. It also will include some tweaks to better accommodate bus service, loading and parking, he said.

The new project will turn Broadway into a more viable cycling route, nearly connecting the popular Cherry Creek path with the burgeoning I-25 and Broadway area.

The design isn’t done — it will take 12 to 18 months to prepare blueprints — and public input will be accepted through Denver Moves Broadway, which is the broader redesign project for the corridor. Construction should happen in the spring and summer of 2020.

Businesses react

Clay Kelley, owner of the Vape Loft on the 100 block of Broadway, said that some of his new customers have jumped off bikes and scooters in search of vaporizers.

“I’ve heard no complaints — nothing,” said Kelley, who only opened up shop recently.

But he has also seen drivers cruising along the temporary lanes or even parking in them, which are protected by flexible posts.

“Some people have no idea how to use it,” he said.

City planners are trying to solve that problem: They’re considering different design elements that could make the lanes more obvious and protected.

“To encourage folks to bike, you really have to provide more protective facilities that are more intuitive and more predictable — not just for bicyclists, but for drivers as well,” Raine said.

Tina Kao, the owner of T-Trove Asian Decor, said she hadn’t noticed any effect on her business from the lanes. Her question was whether the city would install more stations where people can lock their bikes.

“They want to shop, and they don’t have a place to park their bikes safely. That’s the only thing,” she said. She was hopeful that a longer, better-connected bike lane would attract more riders.

It’s all part of a larger transformation: When the new bike lane is done, personal automobiles will be limited to three lanes of Broadway where once they had five.

Impact on drivers and cyclists

Based on the results so far, drivers should expect a slightly slower trip down Broadway.

The current iteration of the lanes corresponded with a slowdown of southbound traffic by about 11 seconds for drivers heading from Colfax to I-25. City staff measured that by driving the route roughly 60 times. Traffic speeds slowed from 38 mph down to 30 mph, which is actually the speed limit, according to city planner Dan Raine. Later tests showed travel times actually improving, he added.

The new project also will set the stage for even more work. As they prepare the construction blueprints for the 1.5-mile stretch, the project team also will lay out conceptual plans for the areas north to 16th Avenue and south to the Broadway rail station.

The idea is that cyclists eventually could ride Broadway north to the new bike lanes on Brighton Boulevard in River North, and south to the rail station at I-25 and Broadway.

“The existing Denver bike lane network does not have a lot of north-south connectivity with dedicated, separated bikeways,” Raine said. “Riding along Cherry Creek is great. Accessing it can be challenging.”