Bike lanes remain in Twenty-Ninth Street plan
By Kurt Nordback
Boulder cyclists won a significant victory recently when two city boards voted to preserve proposed bike lanes on Arapahoe Ave. between 28th and 30th Streets.
As part of the Twenty-Ninth Street (formerly Crossroads) redevelopment plan, city staff had suggested dropping bike lanes shown on this section of Arapahoe Ave. from the Boulder Valley Regional Center (BVRC) Connections Plan, in order to save the five feet of right-of-way a bike lane would require. However, both the Transportation Advisory Board and the Planning Board voted against staff's suggestion, meaning the lanes will stay in the plan. Instead, either the redevelopment site itself or the street-side landscaping and multi-use path will be narrowed to provide room for the bike lanes.
Both the Boulder Valley Regional Center (BVRC) Connections Plan and the Arapahoe Transportation Network Plan show bike lanes proposed for this section of Arapahoe, and the city's Transportation Master Plan shows Arapahoe as a top-priority multimodal corridor. The clear message of these planning documents was a strong factor in the boards' decisions.
As a result of the rulings, the BVRC plan will continue to show the bike lanes, and the five feet of right-of-way will be reserved from the Twenty-Ninth Street project. The lanes would not be built until the street is reconstructed at some future date.
However, it is possible that another on-street bike facility could be built earlier. Specifically, an option raised at the board meetings is to convert the outside lanes of the existing six-lane road to “bus, bike, right-turn” lanes, similar to those planned for the northern section of 28th Street. In this case Arapahoe would not have to be widened, making it a much cheaper alternative to dedicated bike lanes.
Since the part of Arapahoe in question is a state highway, redesignating the outside lanes would require approval of the Colorado Department of Transportation. It is not clear whether CDOT would be willing to okay the change.