What a Year in Transportation Looks Like in Boulder

In 2024, here’s what we worked on to keep our community moving.

Hearing from community

We asked for feedback, and Boulder delivered! Our community's voices helped shape a range of projects, from public murals to safe streets.

• Boulder submitted over 4,988 transportation requests on Inquire Boulder. 2024 hot topics focused on potholes, graffiti and the airport.

• Participants in the citywide Resident Travel Diary Survey helped Boulder track progress toward key city transportation goals, informing future efforts. Findings support ongoing efforts to reduce single-occupancy vehicle travel, continue partnerships to restore transit service and expand micromobility access — ways to get around locally with smaller-scale travel like bikes and scooters.

• We completed the Airport Community Conversation project to understand the community's desired future for the Boulder Municipal Airport site and explore high-level scenarios for its future. While community engagement is complete, the city is pursuing additional information requested by City Council on behalf of the community.

• Updated our community's most frequently requested maps for getting around town: the Bike Map, Walk Map and a new Bus Map. The maps include both practical paths and scenic routes to explore Boulder.

• Brought back our popular guided walks of Boulder as part of our Boulder Walks program for community walking events.

It’s not just roads — everything we use to travel needs to be maintained. City staff work daily to maintain the transportation network that keeps Boulder moving — whether that be our streets, bike lanes, multi-use paths, crosswalks, streetlights, or traffic signs and signals.

Roads and sidewalks

• 35.2 lane miles of pavement repaired.
• 35,000 square feet of pavement patched.
• 203 ADA curb ramps upgraded or built.
• Responded to 881 pothole repair requests.
• Responded to 233 pavement maintenance requests.

Signs and markings

• 2112 traffic signs installed, maintained or replaced.
• 647 traffic posts, or delineators, installed or replaced.
• 2,309 areas where new pavement markings such as crosswalks were placed, maintained or installed.

Snow removal

• Nearly 31,000 miles were plowed to address 81 inches of snow.
• Held the annual snowplow naming contest, with winning names like Mac ‘n’ Freeze.
• 36 adopted bus stops shoveled by volunteers — including 12 new volunteers for the 2024-2025 snow season.
• Completed the Snow and Ice Response Review Project, which included developing a storm-size prioritization approach based on input from the community. The budget-neutral changes support focusing the program on equity, safety, mobility and customer service before, during and after it snows.

Core Arterial Network

A City Council priority, improvements on the city’s Core Arterial Network, or CAN, will help reduce the potential for serious and fatal crashes and make it more comfortable and convenient for people to get where they need to go along Boulder’s main corridors.

• Improved transportation and mobility conditions along Baseline Road and received approval from City Council for an Iris Avenue redesign to support the city’s Vision Zero safety commitment to end fatal and serious injury crashes. Both projects are key priorities on the CAN.
• Completed construction on the 28th Street and Colorado Avenue Protected Intersection Improvements project to improve multimodal transportation — walking, biking, driving and taking the bus. The project aims to increase safety, comfort and connectivity at and nearby the intersection, one of the areas in the city with the highest number of crashes.
• Launched community engagement toward safety improvements on Folsom Street and north 30th Street.

Safer, consistent speeds

• Developed a data-driven and context-sensitive process to set speed limits on city-owned arterials and collectors, improving safety and consistency for travelers. The city has completed reducing speed limits on 13 different street segments and aims to fully implement the study recommendations across the transportation system by 2027.

• Expand traffic law enforcement with the installation and activation of two new red-light cameras at 28th Street/US 36 and Jay Road and at 15th Street and Canyon Boulevard. The city also turned on speed enforcement cameras at Broadway and Pine Street.

Traveling in style

• Installed markings on paths across Boulder to mark the route of the Boulder B360 and B180, and W360 and W180 — biking and walking routes that circle all of Boulder. All routes are available on new walk and bike maps and support visitors and residents getting to know our town by bike or on foot.

• Installed pedestrian wayfinding signs on University Hill and in Boulder Junction and restriped parking spaces to improve accessibility and safety.
  

• Artists installed a new mural street in Goss Grove and public art at a bus stop near north Broadway — just a few of many urban design projects supporting public street art citywide.

New paths, underpasses and crosswalks

• After a decade of work, construction began along 19th Street in north Boulder to improve flood mitigation and multimodal transportation for all travelers. Construction is taking place on several projects in the area, including building a new bicycle and pedestrian underpass connecting Tamarack Avenue to Upland Avenue and replacing and widening the 19th Street bridge.

• We began building a new multi-use path near Valmont Road to provide an off-street connection from 61st Street to the existing pedestrian bridge and multi-use path at South Boulder Creek.

• Included bicycle, pedestrian and transit facility improvements in the annual Pavement Management Program to help make cost-efficient street safety improvements along parts of Moorhead Avenue and Baseline Road.

• Began an update to the Pedestrian Crossing Treatment Installation Guidelines to support safe, accessible travel connections for our community by improving the consistency of new crosswalks citywide.

In 2024, we were awarded over $4.2 million to help fund proposed transportation projects toward supporting safety and connectivity for our community.

• Awarded approximately $1.2 million through multiple Colorado Department of Transportation funding sources to purchase 1 battery electric bus, supporting the city’s current HOP bus fleet of electric and non-electric buses, reducing emissions, and supporting travel operations with an all-electric, emissions-free bus.

• Awarded a Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) grant of $1.2 million to improve travel reliability, performance and safety. The grant will support improved regional and neighborhood travel connections through traffic signal improvements, which include traffic lights at intersections and crosswalks, on parts of five streets.

• We repurposed $3 million in the 2025 Recommended Budget to support managing and maintaining over 4,400 newly acquired public streetlights.

• We completed three crosswalk construction and improvement projects funded by a Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) grant. These crosswalks improve the visibility of people crossing to drivers, leading to safer crossings for all, including children and adults traveling to and from four nearby schools.

One million micromobility rides

The city's shared e-bike and e-scooter program supports more sustainable local transportation alternatives, encouraging people to take trips without a car and connecting them to transit options for longer trips.

• There were over 692,000 trips on Lime e-scooters. Since shared e-scooters were introduced to the city in 2021, Boulder has taken over 1 million trips!

• There were over 778,000 trips on BCycle-bikes.

• Continued to share the Share the Path courtesy campaign for moving around Boulder together, however you choose to get around town.
• We continued to expand access to more sustainable ways of travel and advance Boulder's climate and transportation goals through providing e-bike incentives. The program received high community interest, with over 1,500 registrants entering the random selection process.
• Local bus ridership in Boulder is steady. The community took 545,487 trips on the city’s HOP bus route in 2024.

Supporting employees

• Launched Boulder Clean Commute, aimed at encouraging employers and employees in Downtown Boulder and Boulder Junction to shift away from single-occupancy vehicle trips in favor of more sustainable transportation methods. Employees earn city-matched financial rewards for each sustainable trip, which can be spent at participating businesses in commercial districts.

• Expanded local RTD EcoPass options to include part-time employees in the Central Area General Improvement District (CAGID), supporting sustainable commuting options downtown.
  

Regional travel options

The city collaborated with regional and state partners on transportation projects.

• Construction has begun on the CO 119 Safety, Mobility and Bikeway Project, a proactive project that will help address predicted future congestion on CO 119. Work will make travel safer for all modes and transit travel faster and more reliable between Boulder and Longmont.
• With the support of your input, our partners at RTD improved and brought back popular bus services between Boulder and neighboring cities, including to the Denver International Airport.

Charging up rides

• Advanced electrification goals in the city’s fleet with 15 new electric vehicles and a new electric street sweeper, using existing vehicle maintenance funds, that will replace a vehicle at the end of its life.
  

• Completed installation of 26 new electric charging ports at five different locations across the city. Twenty-two of the 26 are for city fleet vehicles, and four provide access for the community.

• Improved electric vehicle charging infrastructure maintenance processes and performance. More efficient charging has led to a 10% increase in use and over 550 additional charging sessions per month, in comparison to 2024.

• We completed the purchase of over 4,400 streetlights from Xcel Energy and will convert the lights to more efficient LEDs beginning this year, with warmer color temperatures informed by the community's feedback. This long-awaited move will save money, improve reliability, enhance safety and reduce carbon emissions.

Highlights include:

• Construction will wrap up on several projects years in the making— including the Downtown Boulder Station Expansion, the Valmont Road multi-use path, safety and multimodal improvements to Baseline Road and south 30th Street, and more.
• Continued priority work on the city’s Core Arterial Network — with project phases ranging from design and construction to community engagement.
• Conversions to more efficient lights on city-owned streetlights will begin.

• Following changes to state laws to support travel safety, the city will continue expanding automated speed enforcement in 2025.

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2024 City Highlights

Learn about key city work in 2024.

Moving Forward

You can also learn more and provide feedback about how Boulder is staying accessible and connected on A Boulder Today.