This project will make north 30th Street safer and more connected for everyone traveling, regardless of how they choose to travel.

  1. Plan

    2023

  2. Community Engagement

    2024-2025

  3. Design

    2024-2025 (Preliminary Design)

  4. Build

    Future

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Community Engagement

Project Overview

30th Street is a north-south arterial street that provides important connections for multimodal travel — walking, biking, taking the bus and driving.

Today, conflicts between different ways of travel are causing delays for buses and serious safety hazards for people walking, biking and driving on north 30th Street.

By redesigning the street to balance the needs of all travelers, we can create a safer, more efficient street, ensuring smoother commutes for everyone.

This project will collaborate with the diverse community members living, working, and traveling on 30th Street to inform a preliminary design that makes 30th Street between Arapahoe Avenue (CO 7) and Diagonal Highway (CO 119) safer and more connected for all travelers.

Map of North 30th Street Preliminary Design project on the Core Arterial Network. For more information visit the Core Arterial Network webpage.

Community Engagement

There will be opportunities to provide input throughout the project. For past engagement activities, click the dropdowns below.

We partnered with Growing Up Boulder to engage youth and their families from the Family Learning Center.

Participants at the April 24 walk audit on the sidewalk next to an e-scooter.

Participants at the April 24 walk audit.

On Wednesday, April 24, 2024, Growing Up Boulder led a walk audit with 11 children and 23 caregivers of the 30th Street and Valmont intersection. Participants used green and red frames to highlight locations and transportation experiences they liked and didn't like.

Youth using red frames at an intersection to show what they thought could be improved on 30th Street at a 2024 4/24 walk audit

Youth using red frames to show what they thought could be improved on 30th Street at the April 2024 walk audit. 

On Wednesday, May 8, 2024, Growing Up Boulder hosted a follow up event with seven children and seven caregivers to review the findings from the walk audit. Participants shared additional thoughts through a visual preference questionnaire.

Participants at a May 8, 2024, follow-up event with results of visual preference questionnaire.

Participants at a May 8, 2024, follow-up event with results of visual preference questionnaire.

Both events were held in English and Spanish.

Timeline

Anticipated timeline; dates may change.

  • 2023: The Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) approved a funding award for community engagement and conceptual design for this project in the 2024-2027 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).
  • Summer 2024 to the end of 2025: Community engagement and preliminary design.
  • End of 2025: City evaluates preliminary design alternatives for review by the Transportation Advisory Board and City Council.
    • We will document the preliminary design alternatives through the city’s Community and Environmental Assessment Process (CEAP). The CEAP is a formal review process to consider the impacts of public development projects, including transportation improvements, to inform the selection and refinement of a recommended alternative.
    • The recommended project alternative will be presented to and reviewed by the city’s Transportation Advisory Board (TAB). The TAB will make a recommendation to City Council, who will make a decision on the project.
  • Future: We will advance design and begin building improvements.
    • We received a Safe Streets for All (SS4A) federal grant in 2023 to advance design and implement improvements on 30th Street between Pearl Street and the Diagonal Highway. Additional funds will be needed for the remaining recommendations from this preliminary design project, and these will be implemented as funding becomes available.

Background and Plans Guiding This Project

This street is one of the most diverse in Boulder in terms of land uses and demographics. 30th Street provides local and regional connections to the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU) East Campus and the 29th Street Mall, and higher-density housing (both market rate and affordable) in Boulder Junction, several Boulder Housing Partners (BHP) developments, Orchard Grove, and San Juan Del Centro.

Within a ¼ mile of the corridor, 38% of the population identifies as non-white, compared to 24% in the city (2020 Census), and American Community Survey Data suggests a greater proportion of households near the corridor are low-income and without access to a motor vehicle than the city as a whole.

It is this concentration of people and places that leads to 30th Street seeing 20,000 vehicles, 1,109 transit, and 1,700 walk and bike trips on a typical day — a critical number of walking, biking, bus and vehicle trips.

30th Street is an important north-south arterial street in the city’s Core Arterial Network (CAN) — Boulder’s connected system of multimodal transportation improvements along the city’s main corridors that will help reduce the potential for severe crashes and make it more comfortable and convenient for people to get where they need to go.

The Low Stress Walk and Bike Network Plan calls for greater separation and protection between vehicle lanes and people biking on 30th Street due to the posted speed limit of 35mph, existing vehicle volumes being greater than 6,000, and the role 30th Street plays as a central and direct route in the city’s bike network.

Once improvements to enhance the bike facility on 30th St are implemented, 30th Street will be designated as a Recommended Crosstown Route. Recommended Crosstown Routes are highlighted on the city's bike map and form the north-south and east-west connections of the low-stress bike network using on- and off-street bike facilities. They connect neighborhood centers, schools, parks, university campuses, and job centers in the city, and can help travelers plan direct and comfortable walking and biking routes across Boulder.

Based on the density of destinations near residential land uses, the Low-Stress Plan also identified Pedestrian Improvement Areas on and near 30th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Walnut Street, and from Glenwood Drive to Diagonal Highway. These areas were identified for improvements such as new sidewalks, ADA upgrades, new pedestrian crossings, or enhancements to existing crossings. With small changes to make the walking environment safer and more pleasant, more people would likely choose to walk to these destinations instead of drive, supporting travel choices in the city.

The Safe Streets Report provides an overview of the City of Boulder's efforts to continuously improve transportation safety by measuring traffic crash data and identifying trends in crashes. The 2022 report showed that 67% of traffic crashes resulting in serious injury or fatality occur on these streets, leading to the CAN initiative.

The 2023-2027 Vision Zero Action Plan (VZAP) is a companion to the Safe Streets Report, and identifies additional strategies the city can take to reduce fatal and severe crashes.

Community engagement for the city’s VZAP found that 55% of people reporting travel safety concerns for 30th Street felt unsafe biking, while 27% felt unsafe walking.

The VZAP identified a High-Risk Network (HRN): streets in the city with five or more risk factors for crashes and identified corridor-wide themes and crash patterns. 30th Street south of Valmont Road is on the HRN. Initial work has been done to identify and address the crash patterns on 30th Street, such as adjusting left-turn signal phasing at high-crash intersections. This 30th Street project will identify additional work to address the risk factors and common crash patterns.

Boulder's transportation vision is to create a safe, accessible and sustainable multimodal transportation system that connects people with each other and where they want to go. Its goal is to be safe, be equitable, be reliable, provide travel choices and support clean air and our climate commitment.

30th Street is designated as a priority bicycle route and high-frequency transit service corridor, which provides transit service every 15 minutes, in the city’s Transportation Master Plan.

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