Lawrence and Arapahoe Protected Bike Lane
Through its “Denver Moves Next Steps Plan,” the City of Denver desired to enhance on-street bicycle facilities—with the goal of improving the city-wide bicycle network to be more attractive and safe for cyclists of all ages and abilities.
The Kimley-Horn team prepared two separate concept designs and construction document packages for the Lawrence Street and Arapahoe Street protected bikeway projects, from Speer Boulevard to Broadway, for the City and County of Denver (CCD). These innovative projects included parking-protected bicycle lanes—the first in Denver. Our tasks included community outreach, such as presenting to business owners along the corridor and the Downtown Denver Partnership. The corridor evaluation included review of lane widths, turn lanes, and turning movement data to determine appropriate conflict treatments and on-street parking.
The Lawrence Street Protected Bike Lane project also included coordination with the Regional Transportation District that resulted in Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant floating bus islands. A goal of the project was to minimize the elimination of parking spaces due to the implementation of these improvements. We prepared demolition and signing and striping plans and determined the location of vertical traffic delineator posts to inform all roadway users of the protected bikeway.
The Kimley-Horn team worked with City staff to achieve the Mayor’s desire to implement this pilot project by the end of 2015. The City valued Kimley-Horn’s commitment to the schedule and seeing the design through in order to achieve the Mayor’s direction. These projects were constructed in fall 2015 with a ribbon cutting ceremony on December 3, 2015.
We were very fortunate to work with Kimley-Horn on the design and installation of the parking-protected bike lanes. The Kimley-Horn team was expedient and efficient and were able to lead these bikeway corridor projects from concept to installation in months—not years. We’re very pleased with Kimley-Horn and look forward to working with them on other largescale, multi-modal projects.
Dan Raine
| Senior City Planner
City and County of Denver (CCD)