Now is the Time for VAMOS

It’s a difficult moment in Denver amidst broader national troubles. The city budget is getting hammered. Downtown is struggling (though reopening 16th Street provides more than a glimmer of hope.) And hard-won bike lanes are being downgraded.

The Blake Street bike lane was previously protected by upright flex-posts preventing drivers from using it for parking. (Photo credit: Rob Toftness, @nosquish)

But what if, in the midst of this, we can do something big, transformational, and brimming with hope?

VAMOS might be that thing.

VAMOS is a concept we developed during the 2023 Denver municipal campaign to use the City’s wildly popular Shared Streets program to quickly and inexpensively create a complete interconnected network of quiet, joyful streets.

Candidates across the political spectrum embraced the concept and made it part of their campaign platforms, including Mayor Johnston and eight of thirteen City Council Members.

A Shared Street is a quiet, residential street that’s made even quieter through a low-cost set of features that prohibit high-speed cut-through traffic. The result is a street that prioritizes all forms of transportation equally – walking, rolling, biking, and driving.

Imagine a complete network of quiet neighborhood streets crisscrossing the entire city, making it delightful to move around in your neighborhood, and possible for anyone of any age and ability to comfortably use active transportation to go where they want to go.

Here’s why VAMOS meets the moment and can create hope and optimism about Denver’s ability to do big things even when faced with daunting odds and a volatile political climate.

VAMOS unites people who often don’t find common cause. Now is a moment to bring people together and what was most notable about Shared Streets was their universal appeal. Neighbors, people who walk, and people who bike, loved them. They were, to borrow a term, vibrant.

VAMOS is big and ambitious, but low-cost and fits the current budgetary constraints. VAMOS shows we can still do big things. Temporary Shared Streets were built during the pandemic in a week with little more than construction barriers. Permanent Shared Streets can be built for peanuts relative to conventional infrastructure. (Did you know that rebuilding Wadsworth and 6th Ave in Lakewood will cost $200 million?!)

VAMOS can be built in a year and show our ability to do big things. The VAMOS rollout plan starts with a series of ephemeral demonstration projects that use traffic cones to show folks how transformative a Shared Street can be. The full network can be completed in less than a year. And incremental improvements over time will make it better and better.

The Vibrant Denver Bond is a unique opportunity to fund something special. In the fall, we’re going to vote on whether to tax ourselves to fund the Mayor’s Vibrant Denver agenda. What an investment this can be in our health and happiness now and not at some theoretical point in the future.

VAMOS integrates with existing and upcoming infrastructure projects. VAMOS is a supplement, not replacement for the growing “high-comfort” network of protected bike lanes. VAMOS gives Denver a path to create a true, complete network that connects all of the different, disconnected projects so people can actually go where they want to.

So where are we with this? We’re making great progress advancing a plan to start with a series of small scale demonstration projects that build enthusiasm and support for the bond and pave the way for a broader rollout in the fall.

For these demonstration projects, we have letters of support from Council Members Sarah Parady, Flor Alvidrez, and Paul Kashmann, the West Wash Park Neighborhood Association and the Washington Park East Neighborhood Association, where we’d run the initial demonstration projects.

We’ll keep you posted as details unfold. But for now, imagine what we can have within a year. Hopefully, that’s a hopeful picture.