Voters Could Give Denver a New Department of Transportation and Infrastructure

Denver wants its own Department of Transportation, but you can call it DOTI.

City officials and transportation advocates gathered today on the steps of City Hall to announce the proposed transformation of the Department of Public Works into a new Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

Unlike other cities, where public works departments have spun off transportation functions into dedicated DOTs, Denver’s proposed department will be responsible for city streets, the refuse bins on its sidewalks, and the sewers underneath.

“Because these functions play out every day in our public right of way, both under and above ground, it’s imperative we keep these functions under the umbrella of our transportation department,” said Mayor Michael Hancock.

The new department would shift its primary focus to transportation, while allowing it to coordinate its non-transportation projects under a new “one build” approach. For example, instead of digging up a street two times, once to repave it, and later to replace the neighborhood’s sewers, this new planning process would anticipate the repaving project and plan for it to follow the sewer replacement.

“It will allow the department to plan and deliver in a synchronized way,” said Piep van Heuven, chair of the Denver Streets Partnership. “Repaving, crosswalks, signage, Xcel and Denver Water’s work can happen in concert.”

Forming the new department, which Streetsblog called for in 2016 and officials have discussed formally since 2017, requires changing the city’s charter. To do that, the city council will soon be asked to send an amendment to November’s ballot for voters to approve.

The proposed Department of Transportation and Infrastructure would include a division of Public Works within its structure. That division would hold onto responsibility for solid waste and wastewater.

Keeping those functions within one charter agency prevents the city from forming an additional department, which the city estimates will save $7.3 million annually in administrative costs. Though forming the agency comes with no new source of revenue, Eulois Cleckly, the current head of Public Works, says that the money the new department saves could be reinvested to advance the city’s transportation needs.

“We can use that money to build out the rest of our bicycle infrastructure, all the multi-modal projects we have slated,” he said.

These projects include physical changes to city streets, like the mayor’s pledge to build 125 miles of new bike lanes within five years and pedestrian safety improvements called for under the city’s Vision Zero pledge to end all traffic fatalities within the next 11 years.

The charter change would also allow the city to offer transportation services. Though there are no plans to do so now, the city could one day pay the Regional Transportation District to provide additional transit service within Denver, or create its own transit agency to run alongside RTD.