A first-time, multi-department planning process in the City and County of Denver — known as Denveright — is working well, members of Denver City Council were recently told. The effort was announced nearly one year ago by Mayor Michael Hancock and is designed to show a vision for Denver over the next two decades. Four coordinated plans will help shape the future of Denver’s land use, mobility and parks and recreational resources.

Denveright is coordinating the planning processes for updates of Blueprint Denver, the 2002 citywide land use and transportation plan and the 2003 Parks Game Plan, a citywide parks and recreation master plan; Denver Moves: Transit, a new mobility plan for transit in Denver; and Denver Moves: Pedestrians and Trails, a new mobility plan for sidewalks, crossings and trails.

The City Council’s Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee was told that between last summer and March of this year, outreach efforts included two community “think tank” meetings, 21 task force meetings for all plans, 25 street team events and eight community workshops for more than 660 people. Seven online surveys produced 7,160 responses and one hard copy survey had more than 240 responses. Overall, close to 8,500 people were contacted, noted Sarah Showalter, citywide planning supervisor.

She added the outreach effort included a special emphasis on making sure Latino and low-income populations were included, along with those under 18 years of age. Survey kiosks were installed in each Council district this spring, Showalter added, so further comments can be gathered.

“We asked everyone what values and visions they had for Denver for the next 20 years and that led to six vision elements that will form the backbone to the Denveright plan,” Showalter said.

Those six elements are equitable, affordable and inclusive; strong and authentic neighborhoods; well-connected, safe and accessible places; economically diverse and vibrant; environmentally resilient; and healthy and active.

“Unprecedented demands” due to rapid growth

Happy Haynes, executive director of the Department of Parks and Recreation, said the city’s rapid growth had put “unprecedented demands” on the department, especially with issues of equity and access.

The Parks Game Plan outreach asked people what they liked most about Denver and the top response was its parks and open green space, followed by restaurants and entertainment, walkable neighborhoods, opportunities to live a healthy lifestyle and neighborhood main streets.

The Denver Moves: Pedestrians and Trails outreach effort resulted in people asking where sidewalks and trails would be built. A draft plan to identify those areas is planned to be released this fall. The top pedestrian goals were safety and connectivity and the main trail goals were connectivity and transportation. Key destinations were grocery stores and public transit stations or stops.

Parks and Recreation Planner Jay Hank noted most trails in Denver were built 20-30 years ago, “and they’re not up to modern standards.” He said the minimum sidewalk width today is four feet, under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“Denver is also fairly well built out, too,” Hank said, so adding new trails is a challenge.

Kristina Evanoff, a project manager for the Denver Moves: Transit plan, said connected, high quality, healthy transit were three keys. When asked for top priorities to improve transit, frequency and dependability were most requested. When workshop participants were asked what would help them use transit more often, 43 percent said if the service was faster, more frequent and user-friendly.

A related State of the System report highlights light rail service as a plus, but a lack of bus frequency outside peak hours is a minus factor.

“Frequent is every five or 10 minutes, and people need to be able to walk and connect with the service,” Evanoff said.

Compounding the picture is that Denver sees an extra 150,000 workers come into the city each day from surrounding communities, “So this really is a regional conversation,” Evanoff stated.

Denver’s six to seven percent use of transit for daily commutes is very low compared to other major cities, she added.

The plan identified five key goals to help make transit practical for all, accessible and understandable: To enhance and simplify service, improve connections and community health, and sustain the system in the long term. The transit plan is due to be finished by early 2018, Evanoff said.

Crissy Fanganello, director of transportation and mobility, said policies would result from the effort.

“What we know is that transportation should not be a barrier for anyone,” she said.

Principal City Planner David Gaspar said the outreach effort to update the 2002 Blueprint Denver plan found that since then, 67 percent of new houses and 65 percent of new jobs were in earlier identified areas of change and stability. However, Denver citizen’s use of transit had dropped from eight to seven percent during that time.

“But we found a huge increase of 240 percent in the number of people who bike to work, although those numbers are still very low,” Gaspar said. “And more people drive to work alone than they did then.”

Councilman Rafael Espinoza noted the fact many transit-oriented development areas had a very high number of people driving alone to work, which “shows something is drastically wrong.”

“Maybe it’s a case of a highly concentrated, low-cost Denver transit system is what we need,” he added. “We know we have the land area and the zoning to capture more” transit users.