State, federal and city transportation leaders gathered in a small conference room at CDOT’s headquarters Wednesday to announce that a state-led effort to bring much more bus rapid transit service to metro Denver is in full swing.

It’s a priority that gets to the heart of Senate Bill 260, the 2021 state law that tasked the Colorado Department of Transportation with focusing on projects that would seek to roll back the environmental harms car-based transportation brings to often marginalized neighborhoods in the Denver area and beyond.

And Federal and Colorado boulevards — heavily traveled state highways that course through the city — are among those on the list for makeovers.

But Wednesday’s event, which also brought together officials from the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure and the Federal Transit Administration, held symbolic importance in the eyes of transportation advocates like Jill Locantore.

She leads the Denver Streets Partnership, which lobbies for transportation projects that prioritize pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit over cars.

“I thought it was exciting to have the federal government, CDOT and DOTI all in the same room together, saying this is a shared priority for us, starting to build out a network of bus rapid transit on these major arterial streets that are both CDOT highways and local roads,” Locantore said. “It’s really a change in the tone and culture and the approach in the way our leaders are managing these really important streets in our transportation network.”

Plenty of project-specific information was shared at Wednesday’s event. Denver transportation officials are preparing to break ground as early as next summer on the city-led East Colfax Avenue bus rapid transit project.

The hope is service could begin in late 2026 or early 2027, Adam Phipps, director of DOTI, said at the event.

Bus rapid transit systems generally blend buses’ ability to use existing street networks with elements of local rail systems, such as high-frequency departures, more reliable schedules and dedicated loading areas to speed up the process. Often, as will be the case in much of the Colfax corridor, the buses travel in dedicated lanes, though that’s not always guaranteed when projects are implemented.

“BRT is a more attractive, comfortable and frequent transit service,” Phipps said. “It has the effect of shifting the way we travel, reducing that dependency on vehicles and truly achieving mode shift” away from cars.

Officials at CDOT, with backing from Gov. Jared Polis, see establishing a network of bus rapid transit corridors as a key contributor to the state hitting its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals in 2030 by getting single-occupancy vehicles off the road — and increasing safety in the process.

CDOT’s increasing role in supporting transit along major state corridors, including with a new BRT program announced Wednesday, reflects a shift in its posture over the last decade.

Shoshana Lew, CDOT’s executive director, emphasized that the reason the kickoff event was at its headquarters was because it is a stone’s throw from Federal Boulevard. The often dangerous metro-spanning roadway, which already hosts frequent buses that get stuck in traffic, is now being sized up for a long BRT route of some kind.

An environmental study and design work are now underway to bring a bus rapid transit line along 18 miles of Federal. Early assessment work is underway for a 6.5-mile stretch of Colorado Boulevard between Interstate 70 and Interstate 25.

And work is underway on two BRT projects in Boulder County, including along Colo. 119 between Boulder and Longmont. CDOT also aims to extend the Colfax BRT route east of Interstate 225 in Aurora, where Denver’s first-phase project would end.

As Lew put it, the concept is “really something that’s been part of this region’s vision and plans for a very long time” — though such projects can, to varying degrees, face political pushback from drivers upset at the potential loss of lanes or road space.

Denver is in the process of completing a final submission through the FTA to get its hands on the final piece of funding needed to construct the East Colfax BRT project, Phipps said. That funding has been recommended in President Joe Biden’s budget — a step that itself was a major cause for celebration in the eyes of Lew, who noted future BRT efforts in metro Denver will be lining up behind it.

The Regional Transportation District, metro Denver’s major transit agency, said in a news release in March that the East Colfax project had been recommended for a combined $126.9 million in federal funding. Denver officials estimate the total cost of the project will land between $250 million and $260 million. Other funding sources include roughly $70 million in voter-approved city bonds.

No one from RTD spoke at Wednesday’s event, but the agency did have staff in the room, spokesman Stuart Summers said.

RTD, beset by staffing and financial challenges in recent years, expects to operate buses on the Federal and Colorado Boulevard BRT systems once they’re up and running, along with Colfax.

“There is no daylight between RTD and the other stakeholders involved, including CDOT and the City and County of Denver,” Summers said. “RTD has a seat at the table and will continue to support all future planning efforts.”

Denver has decided to call the first BRT corridor the “Colfax Lynx,” a brand that could be extended to other lines that open.

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