Viva Streets is a Gift

At 8 AM last Sunday, Broadway got quiet. People sauntered out into the middle of intersections where humans had almost never set foot. And the persistent rain stopped. Viva Streets had begun.

The best description of Viva is that it's a gift to the people of Denver. It's a taste of what our city can be. And we thank the City, the Downtown Denver Partnership, sponsors, and volunteers for giving us this experience.

Viva was awesome, with huge numbers of people moving freely and joyfully on all sorts of things that roll. People smiled, waved, and literally danced in the streets.

Viva also underscored the power of experiential community engagement. Thousands of people had the opportunity to experience what the future could be like with streets that prioritize walking and rolling.

People demonstrated through their presence what works and, in some cases, what needs improvement. To figure out how to create the best version of Denver, we should be doing these types of pilots all over the city, all the time, constantly honing in on how to make the city better for all people.

In terms of moving VAMOS forward, Viva provided us with an opportunity to test the traffic safety features that will be our building blocks. A big thanks to our volunteers Wendy, Tom, Mark, and Mimi for donning safety vests, braving the rain, and setting up.

In the parking lot at 9th & Broadway, we set up the median traffic diverter we tested at our block party last month.

On the west side of the intersection, we debuted a new feature designed to prevent high speed cut-through traffic on neighborhood streets. This one is called a channelized right-in/right-out.

And on the east side of the intersection, we set up the first version of our must-turn-right feature.

Without context, these features are amusingly boring. But, again, let us glorify the diminutive traffic cone, for it's cones and barricades that made Viva itself possible.

Our designs are based on existing features in Denver that reduce high-speed cut-through traffic on neighborhood streets. What makes the designs significant is that they're templates that can be used at most intersections across the city.

We need lots of these features to calm neighborhood streets and make them optimal for rolling. And this template approach allows us to overcome the scale problem that was a challenge in the past -- when traffic calming features were custom designed for a given intersection and required major tear-up-the-streets construction.

In a lovely bit of circularity, Viva itself a pilot program. Within the massive, 3.5-mile Viva course, we're able to run smaller pilots. And those smaller pilots could eventually add up to something even bigger than Viva. We'll see you at the next one on June 4th.