The Alliance to Transform Transportation

Photo by Staff | TPIN

Photo by Denver Streets Partnership

Photo by Staff | Public Domain

Photo by Staff | Public Domain

Photo by Colorado Cross Disability Coalition

Photo by Conservation Colorado

Photo by GreenLatinos

Photo by ATU 1001

Photo by NRDC

Photo by Bicycle Colorado

Photo by NAACP State Conference | Used by permission

We are the Alliance to Transform Transportation.

Our transportation system does not meet the needs of Coloradans and does not align with our shared commitment toward a healthier and more-connected quality of life. For decades, rather than sustainably investing in providing people good travel options, Colorado has poured a disproportionate amount of money into large highway expansion projects for cars, deepening our dependence on driving and harming underserved populations disproportionately with dangerous emissions.

Access to reliable, affordable, and safe transportation options is essential for addressing systemic disparities in health outcomes and access to housing, food, education, employment, access to justice and recreation.

We believe people move and connect in different ways and every person should have equitable access to their transportation system.

To succeed, we need to Transform our Transportation system by significantly expanding the dollars going into travel options in the Denver region with a focus on building a transit system that equitably reduces air pollution, tackles climate change, saves lives, increases affordability, and expands access to opportunities including work and education.

We also need to stop expanding highways for cars, and reinvest millions of dollars to ensure people have better transportation options including fast, frequent, bus service and safe ways to walk or bike in our communities. For decades, expanding highways for cars has negatively impacted our communities with pollution, noise, unsafe streets, higher personal costs for transportation, and physical barriers.

Significantly expanding transit means billions of dollars – similar in size to FasTracks in 2004 (that was about $5 billion). Our goal is to significantly expand transit dollars by 2025. This will require identifying and securing a lot more new, sustainable money, as well as shifting dollars away from dirty and dangerous highway expansion projects.

Transit means:

• First and foremost, better service, which can be most efficiently provided via buses. It means service that is so frequent your bus or train comes every 5-15 minutes and runs day and night, every day.
• Buses that are reliable and get you to your destination as fast as driving, whether that’s work, school, the grocery store, restaurants, or your friend’s house.
• Our backbone bus system should be supplemented by everything from shuttles to smaller shared service and ride systems.
• Affordable, easy to navigate and use and competitive with other forms of transportation, while being sensitive and responsive to neighborhood context.
• Stops and stations that are welcoming and build dignity with shelters, a place to sit, and bathrooms.
• Networks of sidewalks, bike lanes, and shared micro-mobility services to create a more integrated multimodal transportation system with first/last-mile connections to our trains and buses.
• Local planning that helps people live, work and play without having to drive and make it easier and safer to use transit, walk, roll or biking. Emphasis should be placed on higher-density, transit-oriented spaces.

We are currently focused on the Denver metro region because it is the population center and makes up a significant part of the overall transportation system in the state.

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