Infrastructure: Denver's Mayoral Candidates on the Issues

Denver’s Mayoral Candidates on the Issues: Infrastructure

Denver residents spend a lot about time thinking electric scooters, potholes, mass transit options, bike lanes, broken sidewalks, and, of course, stalled traffic. Here's what the candidates had to say about the path forward when it comes to mobility.

Lisa Calderón: “If we actually had some higher accountability on developers so they just can’t shut down our streets willy nilly, that is part of it. Right now, it feels like the keys to Denver have been turned over to developers and our public streets have been essentially privatized.”

Stephan “Chairman Seku” Evans: “Nobody is putting anything into effect. You know what I’ll do? I can walk faster than I can catch the bus and I’m 67 years old….If you can go for a run, you can walk around this city….In major thoroughfares, instead of having two lanes, I’d have one lane for cars, one lane for bikes, and the bike lane I’d turn into a walking lane.”

Jamie Giellis: “We’re bringing back the streetcar….I think an intracity transit network is probably going to have to be a mix of modes, but you need a good spine to build off of locally as well. And this is a city built on a streetcar network. We’re seeing cities all over reinvest in streetcar because the technology is greater [and] it is quicker to implement than it has been in the past.”

Michael B. Hancock: “We can’t add streets. Denver’s grid is the way it is. So we gotta get more people out of the streets than we do today, and the number we look at is how many single-occupied vehicles do we have in the city?…We have ushered in the multi-modal revolution in Denver and I’m excited about it.”

Kalyn Rose Heffernan: “I’m a public transportation rider. I have been since I was a kid. Our public transportation system is really failing, and it’s really frustrating for me because I’m also part of ADAPT, which is the group that made RTD be the first in the country to be accessible. We’re not providing access to people that need it the most.”

Penfield Tate III: “The traffic issue is, in large measure, a function of this administration completely failing to plan in a comprehensive manner….We’re going to have to be creative in how we get people out of their cars. Bike lanes are part of that. God help us, even the scooters are part of it.”