"As far as biking issues go right now, I would say that flex posts is the largest one. That seems to have a lot of passion around it," says Montana Gau, president and CEO of Strong Denver. "People do care about it a lot."
Strong Denver started around 2023 as the local chapter of nonprofit Strong Towns, a national organization that wants urban residents involved in decisions about their city's planning, development and economy. The organization's philosophy comes from a 2019 book by Charles Marohn Jr., Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.
According to Gau, the Denver chapter now has about a couple hundred members.
"We're trying to build advocates and empower people to build a stronger Denver," he says. "It's just a bunch of urbanists coming together and trying to make Denver a better place."
Strong Denver's priorities have ranged from traffic safety to affordable housing. In October, the group penned an opinion piece against Mayor Mike Johnston's Affordable Denver ballot measure, which would have raised a half-cent sales tax to fund cost-controlled housing. Since last year, Strong Denver has advocated in favor of eliminating minimum parking requirements, which is a core mission of Strong Towns. After months of consideration, Denver City Council is expected to do just that on August 4.
Bicycling constantly ranks as a top issue for Strong Denver, too. Gau says the group is trying to get the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) to pay more attention to bicycling by plowing bike lanes in the winter and creating a connected network of lanes and trails. He believes that government leaders see cycling more as recreation in Denver, and never connected its neighborhoods for cyclists who ride for transportation, a problem the city hopes to fix during the next two decades.
"It doesn't feel like a connected network just yet. Some of the paths feel like they're recreation oriented, and I like to see more commuter-oriented paths. There are certain areas that are hard to get from one part to another by bike," Gau says. "If I want to go from Five Points to the Highlands, there aren't great options. I have to go on sidewalks or I'm on a busy street."
But now the sudden removal of flex posts in Downtown Denver has become the top biking priority for the group. In late May, DOTI began removing flex posts along Blake Street from 14th Street to Broadway, and along Market Street from Speer Boulevard to Broadway. The flex posts had to go for "greater visibility" and to "enhance the overall aesthetics," according to DOTI spokesperson Nancy Kuhn, so they were replaced with much smaller dividers called Zippers.
Kuhn says that DOTI will keep flex posts in "key locations, including corners and turn locations," and will make them "more noticeable in places where they're needed most and where they provide the biggest safety benefit."
In addition to protecting bike lanes, flex posts are also meant to shorten pedestrian crossings by extending along crosswalks and to make lanes visible during when it snows. DOTI is putting Zippers at targeted locations, like at intersections where flex posts are frequently knocked, according to Kuhn.
"The vast majority of protected bike lanes and neighborhood bikeways installed over the last decade in Denver have utilized flex posts to some degree," Kuhn says. "DOTI is growing and evolving in the design of its bikeways, utilizing a wider variety of strategies, materials such Zippers and speed cushions and designs to deliver more context-sensitive bikeways and to improve aesthetics."
The removal of flex posts highlights a few growing issues with biking in Denver, according to Gau. Cyclists initially were concerned about the possibility of bare bike lanes exposing cyclists to cars that might unknowingly veer into their lanes, according to the Denver Bike Lobby, another local advocacy group. Since the flex posts were replaced, Strong Denver has been hearing more complaints about cars parked in the downtown bike lanes now protected with Zippers, he adds.
"The Zippers are really easy to just drive over," Gau says. "If there's a car parked in the bike lane then I have to go into the street, and that's just really unsafe generally. I don't think anyone has preferred the Zippers from what I've heard."
Blocked bike lanes by parked cars, delivery vehicles and trash were a common complaint among Denver cyclists before the flex posts were removed, In April, locally based Bike Lane Uprising App reporting that blocked bike lanes have increased significantly as of late.
"Bike lane blockage is a huge one. If the bike lanes are blocked, people aren't going to use that infrastructure that's made for them," Gau says. "As a cyclist, it's very frustrating if you're trying to get from one point to another...it shows a disregard for biking infrastructure."
The city's communication with Denver cyclists also left a lot to be desired, according to Gau, as nobody with Strong Denver knew the city would be removing flex posts until media reports in May.
"Most of the people in the urbanist community here are pretty in tuned with what's going on in the city and stuff that's coming up, and this one just kind of felt like it had no warning, no public comments section, no anything," Gau argues. "That caught a lot of people off guard."
Strong Denver is planning to get its two cents in with a City Council sit-in, during which members of Strong Denver will sign up in large numbers to speak during the public comment period of a Monday meeting. Gau hopes that continued dialogue will help Strong Denver convince DOTI to think differently about bike lanes.
"There just isn't much priority given to bike lane infrastructure. It just seems like an afterthought," Gau says. "Putting your primary focus on pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is how you get really great places. That's how you get a place where people want to live."
