by Geneva Hooten and Joel Noble

At our meeting on September 10th from 6 to 8 p.m. at 1201 Williams Street, we had three presentations on a variety of interesting topics. A big thank you to Michael Henry for providing the room for our committee!

eTuk USA: Denver-based Tuk Tuk Manufacturer & eTuk Denver: Local Transportation Provider — Walid Mourtada, CEO

eTuk USA may be the new kid on the block, but they’re here to stay. Based on the Tuk Tuks made ubiquitous in Southeast Asia and parts of South America, Walid Mourtada has created a new transportation option for Denver residents. Launched in April 2015 after a long legal and regulation process, eTuks are three-wheeled electric vehicles crafted in Denver. The vehicles include face-to-face seating for up to six passengers and can reach 25 MPH. In four months’ time, 3 eTuks have covered 16,000 miles, mostly in the downtown core on weekends and evenings. Two additional vehicles are being added, with service around the DU area coming soon.

Walid is interested in carving out a greater share of the transportation market, especially as a viable extension of transit services. Coming soon is the “Ride eTuk” user app, staging and charging stations in town, and new facilities for vehicular storage, charging, and maintenance.

We look forward to seeing more eTuks on the road in the future!
Learn more about eTuk USA at www.eTukUSA.com and follow the evolution of eTuk use for local transportation on the eTuk Denver Facebook page.  Walid’s presentation slides include much more detail about the history of the company, the complex regulatory hurdles they overcame, the vehicles’ safety and environmental features, flat-rate pricing in various zones in Denver, and information about their expansion into other cities.

Vision Zero: An Overview of Implementations in the United States — Geneva Hooten, Transportation Planner, Toole Design Group & INC Transportation Committee Co-Chair

In 2013, 32,719 people died in traffic-related fatalities in the United States, of which almost 5,000 were pedestrians. To combat this, eleven American cities borrowed the Swedish idea that no one should die on the road. Borrowed from Sweden, the vision of zero traffic-related deaths is rooted in the belief that every transportation death reflects a failure in the system.

At a national level, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials started a “Toward Zero Deaths” program to reduce roadway fatalities. This includes  countermeasures related to education, enforcement, engineering, and emergency medical and trauma services.The Federal Highway Administration says, “we believe that a single death is a tragedy; almost 90 deaths a day is unacceptable when we possess the tools and capability to help prevent them.” In 2014, the Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, asked for mayors across the country to participate in his “Mayors’ Challenge for Safer People, Safer Streets” which called for a consideration of all modes when planning and making decisions about our streets. While safety was the bedrock of this challenge, an explicit Vision Zero component was not included.

Cities throughout the United States are embracing Vision Zero. Mayor Bill deBlasio of New York committed to Vision Zero during his 2013 mayoral campaign and a Vision Zero Action Plan was published in 2014. This Plan details 63 initiatives across multiple City departments and includes a central website to house crash data, initiatives, progress, stats, and educational materials. Early successes include arterial slow zones, a 25 MPH citywide speed limit, close study of 50 intersections and corridors each year, $25M to fund 13 projects, and educational campaigns. Remarkably, 2014 was the safest year for pedestrians in New York City’s history.

Seattle has a plan to end traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. They’re tackling this challenge through data-driven decision making and transparency. Similar to New York’s program, Seattle streets with high collision history are under close scrutiny, the city has implemented 20 MPH Neighborhood Slow Zones, an arterial traffic calming program, targeted outreach, and uses the revenue from their speeding cameras to fund transportation improvements.
Ultimately, Vision Zero is successful because it provides a transparent framework for identifying and prioritizing improvements that save lives. It avoids the “us” versus “them” mentality by inviting all road users to buy into an ethic and process. While American Vision Zero initiatives are still in their infancy, we are seeing a rise in Vision Zero policies and plans across the country.

The slides from Geneva’s presentation are available. INC’s adopted Transportation Platform includes a call for Denver to fully sign on to Vision Zero: “3.1 Denver should commit itself, at the highest levels, to the Vision Zero goals of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries, learning from the emerging best practices in other cities. This is a moral issue – life and health are of paramount importance, and the transportation systems and features should lessen the impact when inevitable human errors occur.”

Denver Street Paving: Challenges, Plans, and Outlook — Pat Kennedy, PE Senior Engineer, Denver Public Works
Driving, biking, transit and walking all depend on streets that are in good repair — it’s the platform we all depend on to get around. Pat Kennedy and his group maintain the pavement quality throughout Denver, supporting 5,563 lane-miles of roadway.  (A lane-mile is one lane wide and a mile long, so a three-lane street would have three lane-miles per mile of length.)  Most of these are local streets (3,786 lane-miles), with the rest classified as collector streets (840 lane-mles), and arterials (937 lane-miles). CDOT, DIA, and others maintain an additional 500 lane-miles in Denver, approximately.

Streets wear at different rates depending on how heavily they’re used, with arterials needing more maintenance than local streets. Denver is budgeted to pave about 360 to 380 lane-miles per year, and so must carefully track the condition of all the streets in order to optimize the maintenance investment. Each of our approximately 23,000 street blocks is examined once every five years to determine the pavement quality on a 100-point scale called the “pavement condition index”, and standard wear calculations project the deterioration due to weather and use in the next few years as input into a prioritized multi-year and annual maintenance program. Planning is done for local and collector streets in half-mile-square sectors (about 15 lane-miles).

The annual paving program takes into account work being done by other groups in the roadway, such as Denver Water, Xcel Energy, and RTD FasTracks, so that pavement isn’t improved right before another group needs to cut into it, to the extent possible.

There are three levels of treatment for improvement pavement quality of roadways, with the goal being to most cost-effectively extend the life of the roadways without having to fully reconstruct the street.  The least expensive approach, “chip seal”, costs about $4.50 per square yard, while a full reconstruction in asphalt can cost $200 per square yard, and reconstruction in concrete (such as was done recently in Cherry Creek) can cost up to $300 per square yard. A mid-level reconstruction approach, called mill-and-overlay, can cost $10-25 per square yard depending on the depth of replacement and type of road. Timely less-expensive interventions that can add as much as 15 years of life are vital to containing the cost of maintaining good pavement condition.

Recycling is a large part of the asphalt program, with the removed material taken to Denver’s asphalt plant to be reused at a 25% rate. One technique for local streets called “hot in-place recycling” heats the street, loosens it, adds more material, and recompacts it, using far less raw materials (about 60% reuse) and minimizing materials transportation costs.

Denver has two paving crews of its own, and does about half of the paving, with the rest done by contractors. Adding a third Denver crew is under consideration, but is a major investment in equipment and staffing.

Historically, an arterial street will last about 10 years before it needs to be repaved, while a local street carrying less traffic lasts about 17-20 years.  We’re not keeping up with a “steady state” rate —  performing street paving based on the rate at which deterioration occurs and not falling behind.  We’re doing better than we used to, particularly on local streets with money provided by the 2A vote (ending as dedicated funding after 2016), but our arterial and collector pavement quality is suffering.  A “steady state” would require paving about 430 lane miles per year (instead of 360-380 per year), so with this 15% underrun in investment, every six or seven years we fall a full year behind.

There is no ongoing funding for maintaining paved alleys. There is some money for paving currently-unpaved dirt alleys.

Denver takes pothole maintenance seriously, both for liability reasons and because small problems can quickly develop into larger, more expensive problems. The City has ten pothole crews, and they collectively repair 100,000 potholes per year.  The best way to report potholes is to call 3-1-1 or use the 3-1-1 PocketGov app — reported potholes are filled within 48 hours 95% of the time. Pat considers 3-1-1 for pothole reporting an exceptional success, and encourages everyone to use this method of reporting.

Many thanks to Pat for this in-depth presentation and extensive Q&A with our very engaged audience!  His full slides are available, as are two papers he has written over the last couple of years pertaining to sustainable funding for street paving.

WalkDenver Sidewalk Petition

INC has called for the city to develop an alternate funding mechanism for citywide sidewalk installation and maintenance since at least 2008, with the the publication of the INC Sidewalk Position Statement. This call is repeated in the recent INC Transportation Platform.

Our friends at WalkDenver have developed an online petition, also calling on the city to fund citywide sidewalk installation and maintenance. Please consider signing it and passing it along to your friends and neighbors, as it supports one of INC’s long-held goals for neighborhoods and safety.
Call for Interest — Reading Group for Transit Book

The INC Transportation Committee is considering putting together a reading group for Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich our Communities and Our Lives — a highly-regarded and very readable book about the key choices in designing a quality mass transit network.

The reading group would likely meet twice to discuss the first and second half of the book, and share thoughts about how what we’ve read can inform our participation in Denver’s new Transit Plan, being co-developed with the Blueprint Denver update, starting in the winter.

If you would be interested in joining a reading group for Human Transit, please send us an e-mail so we can get a sense of how many people might be interested, and we’ll start looking for dates and venues.

Upcoming Meeting Schedule
The INC Transportation Committee’s meetings through 2016 will continue to be at 1201 Williams St., 19th Floor:

• Thu. Nov. 12th 2015, 6-8 p.m.
• Thu. Jan. 14th 2016, 6-8 p.m.
• Thu. Mar. 10th 2016, 6-8 p.m.
• Thu. May 12th 2016, 6-8 p.m.
• Thu. Jul. 14th 2016, 6-8 p.m.
• Thu. Nov. 10th 2016, 6-8 p.m.

Many thanks to Michael Henry for the wonderful meeting space!