Mayor’s Bicycle Advisors Finally Get a Meeting

Ask, and you shall receive.

The Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee finally got the ear of Mayor Mike Johnston for a half-hour at its monthly meeting on Thursday, December 4. Leadership of the 24-person policy advising committee had complained in October about Johnston’s lack of engagement with them. During this week’s face-to-face, the MBAC asked the mayor to attend at least two meetings each year, as well as provide a $500 to $1,000 annual budget for the committee and be more involved in decisions that affect Denver’s two-wheeled travelers.

Johnston told the committee members that he could use more of their input during the next six weeks as he sets goals for 2026, which will include improving Denver traffic safety and rethinking what city infrastructure needs the most urgent upgrades.

The City of Denver has dozens of boards and commissions, mostly created to inform city-level policy decisions. Councilmembers, department heads and the mayor typically get input from advisory boards and commissions through liaisons or by attending meetings themselves. Then-Mayor Federico Pena created the MBAC in the 1990s; it’s one of only three city commissions that has “mayor” in the name. At the MBAC’s previous meeting, committee leadership noted the irony of having not yet met the mayor more than halfway through his first term.

At the December 4 meeting, Loren Hansen, the MBAC chair, told Johnston that the committee wants to be more involved with bike infrastructure projects, while also keeping communications open. The mayor promised to follow up on the committee’s request for twice-annual visits, and offered to join a group bike ride in the early part of 2026 — but said he needs to get a new bike first.

The small annual budget that MBAC requested would pay for “event supplies” and “MBAC-related swag,” Hansen said, part of a goal to increase recruiting efforts and find more representation across council districts. After noting that “we don’t usually have a budget for an advisory committee,” Johnston said he’d work on allocating some money for committee efforts, including the Denver Bike Fest organized by a few MBAC members that was held for the first time in April. However, the mayor also noted that the city is going through “a difficult budget challenge,” with a $200 million deficit ahead of 2026.

The mayor hopes to use the MBAC’s expertise to reduce traffic deaths in Denver, he added. During the next six weeks, Johnston’s office will prepare a plan with the Denver Police Department and Denver Department of Transportation & Infrastructure to reduce traffic deaths in 2026, which he called “a top city priority.” According to Denver’s Vision Zero dashboard, more than eighty people have died on Denver’s roads while driving, walking or cycling so far in 2025; Denver has reported between eighty and 85 such deaths every year since 2020.

“We are going to see one of the highest numbers of traffic fatalities this year,” Johnston added. “We’re very concerned about the direction to take to drive that number down.”

The mayor also wants advice down the road on prioritizing bicycle-related infrastructure projects, he told committee members, adding that he expects to revisit the city’s six-year capital improvement plan, which outlines major investments in buildings, infrastructure and other physical assets.

“Which of those projects should be reprioritized, which should be moved back, which we might want to move up — and so if there are investments that you all think of as the single-highest priority, that you would want to flag for us around safe infrastructure, we would love feedback,” he said.

The city will be able to fund more than $950 million worth of capital improvement projects through the Vibrant Denver bond package approved by voters in November. June Churchill, a member of the MBAC once known as “Denver’s bike mayor,” pointed out that “there’s no major new bike projects” approved for Vibrant Denver bond funding, which cyclists had also noted before the bond measure was approved. Still, Johnston’s meeting with the committee was “quite productive,” she said.

“The mayor responded directly to MBAC’s asks and made a number of commitments,” Churchill told Westword. “I wasn’t expecting anything radical or truly transformative out of this meeting, but explicitly establishing MBAC as a resource the mayor is willing to directly invest in and consult is a good thing.”

According to Johnston, his priorities include increasing road safety without taking any convenience away from drivers.

“We want this to be a city where it is safe and easy to get around by bike or by foot,” Johnston told Westword after the meeting. “We want to build infrastructure and a culture that makes that easier, and we think we can do that without making it more difficult for drivers.”

Johnston cited the rollout of Ziclas, the short, heavy dividers that replaced flex posts along certain protected bike lanes. Cyclists didn’t like losing the flex posts, but Johnston said many of those posts were meant to be temporary, adding that the hopes Ziclas become known as the “Denver curb.” He described the Spanish-made product as “permanent, safe infrastructure” that’s flat on the side that faces drivers and sloped on the side that faces cyclists. “Cars can’t drive over that,” he noted, while cyclists can bump into the Ziclas without too much impact.

“In places where we’re pulling down bollards, it’s because we’re putting up more protective lanes,” Johnston added. “Those more-protected lanes have concrete or these ‘Denver curbs’ that are going to be both safer for bikers and pedestrians.”

The meeting was “incredibly productive and “I am happy with what was discussed,” Hansen said. While he added that he would’ve liked a chance to talk more about “being involved earlier in the planning process for infrastructure and committee funding, having this conversation with Mayor Johnston overall was a net good and something we will build on, particularly on a bike ride next year.”

According to Johnston, he enjoys cycling with his family but has been in the market for a new bike since last year, when a couple of bicycles were stolen out of his garage (he’s also seen two of his cars stolen). The mayor acknowledges that bike theft is unfortunately common in Denver; so far this year, the DPD has reported more than 2,700 bike thefts across the city, up from about 2,600 in 2024.

“I’ve lived the whole Denver life. We’ve all lived through it,” Johnston said. “I’m still in the market, but now I have some folks to help me do it.”