Denver bike plan mostly talk, auditor says
Reprinted from the Denver Business Journal
Jul 16, 2015, 3:03pm MDT
Despite all the talk about making Denver the most bike friendly city in America, a city audit of Denver’s master plan for bikes suggests it’s mostly talk and little action.
City Auditor Dennis Gallagher, in a stinging audit of the bicycle program, “Denver Moves: Making Bicycle and Multi-use Connections,” said the project has only spent $2.8 million of $119 million originally planned for pedestrian and bicycle transit project in the city.
Fragmented execution, a failure to fully fund the plan because money was spent elsewhere, lack of timelines and annual reporting requirements are among the deficiencies cited in the audit.
Auditors gave the city five recommendations, all of which were agreed to by the city.
You can read the full audit report here.
Four years after Denver Moves was developed, key goals remain unmet, the audit found. For example, the plan envisioned that when completed, the city would have 442 miles of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in place.
In 2011, the year the plan was announced, the city had 172 miles of bike and pedestrian pathways, and by March 2015 that number had grown to 240 miles.
The initial plan had a goal of creating “a biking and walking network where every household is within a quarter mile (a 5-minute walk or 2-minute bicycle ride) of a high ease of use facility.”
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