The City of Boulder is proposing major changes to the northern stretch of 30th Street to make the corridor safer for people who walk, bike or get around by means other than a vehicle.
The recommendation, released earlier this week, calls for protected bike lanes that would be separated from traffic with concrete barriers from approximately Canyon Boulevard to the Diagonal Highway. Currently, bike lanes on 30th Street are painted.
The plan would also reduce the number of vehicle lanes from four to three in sections along 30th Street, mostly north of Pearl Street. The southern stretch would keep four vehicle lanes, in part to avoid delaying drivers’ travel times and to maintain access for emergency vehicles, according to city officials.
At the intersection of 30th and Walnut streets, the city is also proposing to remove a right-turn slip lane. Slip lanes are designed to speed up vehicle traffic but are considered a hazard to pedestrians and cyclists.
The proposal is part of the city’s Core Arterial Network (CAN) project, a broader effort to make the city’s busiest roads safer. City officials have said one goal is to reduce crashes, particularly those involving cyclists and pedestrians, while also taking into account travel times for drivers and buses. According to the city, about two-thirds of the crashes on the northern stretch of 30th Street that result in serious injury involve vulnerable road users such as cyclists.
The North 30th Street project is funded with about $9 million from the federal Safe Streets for All grant, according to a city official. The city has said the $23 million grant has not been impacted by federal funding cuts.
The city is currently gathering feedback on the North 30th Street proposal. Officials will present a recommendation to the Transportation Advisory Board and Boulder City Council as soon as next month.
Other CAN projects, including Iris Avenue and Folsom Street, are still in the design phase and do not yet have construction funding. A separate project to renovate Baseline Road from 30th Street to Foothills Parkway is funded and nearing its final design, according to the city.
You can watch a video from the City of Boulder on the Protected Intersections – North 30th Street Preliminary Design Project.
More. Boulder doesn’t want no stinking cars. Or small businesses. Or customer. 28 is pure potholes. None being fixed. 30 is one of the last access points to what business is left. I already shifted a lot of my money to Longmont. But Boulder is weeping they don’t have enough money. Or enough housing. What about the empty buildings. Oh well. Destruction of functional economies is the name of the game. From the White House on down
I was hit by a pickup on 30th crossing Pearl in 2023. The proposed improvement wouldn’t have prevented the collision. A driver in the left lane made a right turn, crossing in front of a SUV in the right lane. The woman in the SUV waved him to turn. Neither saw me in the bike lane. This was in the middle of the afternoon, I was wearing high visibility clothing, etc. Luckily everyone was going slow and I wasn’t badly hurt.
Glad to hear you weren’t badly hurt, TDK! I’m not sure how productive any of these moves are. Interesting to hear that the next bike boondoggle wouldn’t have affected your sitch.
I have serious concerns about removing any lanes from Iris, which is already incredibly busy with car traffic. I live on North Broadway, and many days there is a line of cars trying to turn left onto Iris that is so long that it blocks southbound traffic in the next lane. It has become quite dangerous to navigate as cars change lanes to avoid the line of cars waiting to turn. With talk of developing the NE corner of this intersection (which I also consider to be a bad idea) this intersection will be even more congested. I thought this possibility was put to rest years ago, but apparently that is not the case if we are waiting for funding to get to work.
This is one thing the designers apparently fail to understand. The extra congestion from any lane closures will make it more dangerous and unpredictable as drivers jockey to change lanes to avoid the long backups. Nevermind the increased pollution from all those cars waiting through multiple traffic lights. How many bikers want to deal with that? Also especially dangerous – north of Pearl on 30th since Valmont is a very busy intersection. I often get the sense that these plans are deemed necessary because staff needs to keep working on something.
What does the new fire station on 30th
Feel about it. I wonder by tightened up main arteries with emergency vehicles will this impede access to get through.
Instead of spending money on this “improvement” how about fixing the potholes all over Boulder. My out of town visitors are always shocked at how bad Boulder’s roads are. Fix what is already there.
Wasn’t this bike lane stuff tried on Folsom/Canyon going north and it was a disaster. Why do you want to spend 9 million more when it’s not needed. We are already making a mess of the diagonal, but I won’t comment further on that mess. We should’ve made the bike lane in the middle of the diagonal to have just public transportation allowed to use it. It would’ve probably helped get people to use the bus. ( I guess I commented further).
Improvements to making 30th safer for biking would be greatly appreciated!
Lets get 30th from Colorado Ave to Arapahoe finished – after about 4 years of being torn up, before starting anything else on 30th St. And the proposal needs to be Valmont to the Diagonal not south of there. City allowed all of the new condo/apt buildings to be build Pearl to Valmont – then you dont squeeze the traffic lanes. Common Sense
You mean you don’t know about the Hyundai dealership demolition and 200 some apartments to replace it?
How can you shrink arterials with this kind of demand of use?
I would love to see better analysis on how Boulder is making decisions on how to spend money by how many people the changes actually effect. I’m a biker and appreciate wanting things to be safer, but I think it would be far more prudent to compare:
(a) the # of people who drive 30th and don’t want to add more traffic to that route
(b) the # of bikers who use 30th as a regular route
(c) the # of serious accidents that involve cars and bikers on 30th
(d) then show the cost of the project ($9M) divided by each (b) and (c) to see the cost per person positively effected.
Then, expand that analysis by exploring voters’ other priorities on “safe streets”. I would venture a strong guess that the # of people wanting:
(d) potholes addressed
(e) all streets actually cleared of snow quickly– including side streets!!
(f) and proper trimming of trees/bushes around corners so that you can actually get safe visibility for turns
… would all be MUCH higher than the number of bikers using 30th Street at all. There likely isn’t a way to easily integrate the #s/$s associated to visitors for amount of wear and tear on our cars, fender benders, or accidents that occur from improvements, but I believe they would make far more ROI (positive impact, stress reduction, costs savings, and # of accidents) on our communities as a whole for the dollars spend.
I love biking, and it’s great that Boulder is overall already one of the most bike-friendly towns in the country. But we have a lot of other issues that are hurting the safety of our streets that aren’t related directly with biking, and although they may not be as “sexy” or marketable as biking, they are far more problematic.
Sara, one fact I can provide is that bikes comprise a mere 0.007% of the traffic on Iris, and the big lane squeeze there doesn’t really consider that so few bikes on that arterial. That tiny, teeny portion of 1% of bike traffic (7 one-thousands of 1%) compares to 20,000 cars per day on Iris. These figures were put out by the city during their last analysis. Seems to me that city government and staff don’t really care what people prefer. They have their agenda, and they’re sticking to it. All arterials must be squeezed no matter if an emergency or fire occurs.
Emily, just to point out that 0.007% is 1.4 of the 20,000 cars trips per day. I no longer live in Boulder, but when I used to over a decade ago I would sometimes use Iris when commuting by bicycle…..by this calculation, my round trip would already exceed the daily average. Plus, I know it wasn’t tons of people, but I would see others riding on Iris.
Also, wouldn’t an arterial “squeezed” to 3 lanes be as easy or easier for emergencies or fires: a 3rd virtually empty middle lane would allow easy clearing or limiting to single flow-thru direction versus 4 lanes filled across the board.
0.007% of 20,000 = 1.4 bikes per day. If you’re not good at arithmetic just ask Google or ChatGPT.
This seems like a fine plan, but I’d love to see protected bike lanes in the section between Baseline and Colorado (or Arapahoe), which sees very heavy bike traffic (it’s a student-heavy neighborhood) and lots of speeding cars.
This is where Aurora ave comes in, it’s so much of a better idea ot use aurora or 35th which is what I did as a student. Or if going for a relaxing bike, use the bike path at ~35th
I wish Boulder would be a bit more thoughtful in planning road construction. I live in North Boulder, near 28th and Iris. Over the past couple of years, almost every major roadway to get into town has been under construction (30th, 28th, Folsom, Iris) AT THE SAME TIME!! Why can’t someone figure out this work should be staggered?
Because it is an endless building boom. Go testify at Planning Board.
Because it is an endless building boom. Go talk at Planning Board.
really liking the raised pathways on the newer section of 30th, not a big fan of biking in the road even with barriers. Road dieting is absolutely the right call, was counting like 6 lanes at 30th and Pearl. People in this comment section, for just a moment imagine you live in these apartments and want to walk across the street to go to whole foods and you have to cross 6 lanes of traffic. Oh and for people talking about Iris road dieting, if you go back into the daily camera archives you’ll find the residents on Iris felt like their neighborhood was being destroyed by the road widening. Moral of the story, people don’t like change and lack imagination for walkable neighborhoods.
Taylor, you must be counting turn lanes as through-traffic lanes! Not the same thing. There are two lanes of through traffic in each direction at that intersection. People seem to be able to get across 30th St just fine with the blinking crosswalks. I feel as tho the road diets are going to lead to disruption and more accidents.
Just FYI, I cross 30th at Pearl on foot several times a week and it is not a problem and, furthermore, there is a pedestrian underpass just south of Pearl.
Taylor, this is the real live costs of growth. Plain and simple!
To get from Aurora to Walnut I cross the pedestrian bridge over Boulder Creek, which involves wending my way along 35th, the Voodoo Donuts parking lot, and other byways. The city should work out a bike route that avoids 30th. This route could even extend further north, to connect with the bike route that starts in Boulder Junction.
This is such great news! 30th is such an important road – it connects multiple groceries stores, target, a bike shop, campus, and a huge amount of housing. Biking in that area was always harrowing. I even got hit by a car once. Yet it’s what I had to ride to get my groceries when I was a student many years ago. Making this street actually safe for cyclists will be a profound change.
There have been 26 bike related crashes in 10 years and that makes this a dangerous place to ride your bike to the point of paying millions of tax payers dollars to make it even worse traffic and let city council steel more money claiming the project will end up costing more money like how stupid can people be to keep allowing this to happen
Also of note: E-Bike Trends: While serious injury crashes are being addressed, Boulder has seen an increase in total bicycle crashes involving e-bikes, rising from 4% in 2021 to 25% of all bicycle crashes by 2024.
City of Boulder (.gov)