Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:23:22
Allen Cowgill
Last year was our first year at the elementary school with my kids in the younger grades, and I'd say there are typically maybe four or five bikes out on the bike racks beforehand. Since we've started the bike bus, I think half the game is just showing people that biking the school is possible. And that's my hope with the bike busses, even though we're not able to do it every week just based on our constraints of volunteers and bandwidth and funding.

00:00:23:24 - 00:00:34:29
Allen Cowgill
It's showing kids that it's possible. And we've anecdotally, I've seen a lot more kids biking the sport, maybe 20 or 30 kids on the bike racks on warmer weather days. And it's just a blast.

00:00:35:02 - 00:01:00:11
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and that is Allen Cowgill from Denver, Colorado. We're going to be talking about active mobility in Denver and his new bike bus that he got started for the local school where his kids go to school. It is a good one, but it's another long one. So let's get right to it with Alan.

00:01:00:13 - 00:01:04:18
John Simmerman
Allen Cowgill, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns Podcast. Welcome.

00:01:04:20 - 00:01:07:00
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, thanks for having me, John. I'm excited to be here.

00:01:07:03 - 00:01:12:28
John Simmerman
So, Alan, if you wouldn't mind, just please give a quick little background on who you are.

00:01:13:00 - 00:01:34:17
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, my name is Alan, Kojo. I'm from Denver, Colorado, a volunteer with the Denver Bicycle lobby and also occasionally with the Denver Streets Partnership. I use I get around, buy a cargo bike, take my kids to school, go shopping, things like that. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Advocate for safer streets and multimodal transportation.

00:01:34:19 - 00:01:55:16
John Simmerman
Fantastic. I really appreciate you doing this. One of the reasons why I wanted to chat with you here today is is talk a little bit about that whole scene there in Denver and the fact that you all are doing some really exciting things, but it may be kind of step back and think a little bit about how I first heard about you.

00:01:55:18 - 00:02:22:26
John Simmerman
And I think it had to be Arlie Greenwald back when she had her shop there in Denver. It was just a wonderful family cycle where you shop and cargo bike shop, and I paid her a visit. I was doing some video work up in Boulder and I'm like, Oh, I've got to get down and see Arlie. And so I paid her a visit at her shop and we were just talking and we were talking about advocacy and some of the exciting things that were happening in Denver.

00:02:22:26 - 00:02:27:29
John Simmerman
And your name came up. Now does that that sound about right? Is that probably how I first heard about you?

00:02:28:01 - 00:02:45:27
Allen Cowgill
Could have Been Early is amazing. We were so lucky to have her in Denver for so many years. She's been in not only the bike shop industry is of racing and has been a tremendous advocate. I look at her as a mentor in the space around just encouraging more people to bike and showing people the possibility of biking.

00:02:46:03 - 00:03:05:18
Allen Cowgill
I was actually over at her shop last weekend. Mackenzie Hart took it over. It's now Hart Family cyclist, so it's still the shop is still going strong. Yeah, but she's doing some great stuff out the Carolinas doing some great stuff for Yeah turn now and I'm excited to see what's what's new for her but yeah I definitely miss having her in town.

00:03:05:21 - 00:03:25:22
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And I just pulled up her website here, a bike shop girl and she still produces a fair amount of content because she's also a content creator. She's got a fabulous YouTube channel. And as you mentioned, she's doing a lot of the marketing work for Turn Bicycles, which is fantastic. And there's a great turn right there that looks like a GSD.

00:03:25:24 - 00:03:45:24
John Simmerman
And yeah, so I think that's that had to have been the very first time that, that I had heard about you. And then we eventually had the opportunity to meet. Now it was that the first time that we actually formally met was this past, you know, what was it, June when we had the, the community bicycle ride.

00:03:45:27 - 00:03:54:12
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, yeah. With the ride for racial justice that Marcus and Neil put on. Yeah, I think that was the first time I actually got to see you in real life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:54:18 - 00:04:02:24
John Simmerman
I know that you saw me the year prior, the summer prior when I was filming the E-bike videos for Bicycle Colorado. That's right.

00:04:02:29 - 00:04:05:10
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, I was kind of stalking in the background. Yeah.

00:04:05:10 - 00:04:09:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. I think you were either riding by or whatever. You were stalking in the background, but.

00:04:09:16 - 00:04:16:15
Allen Cowgill
You're talking to our state Senator Julie Gonzalez. I think around the time. She's an amazing force for good here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:04:16:17 - 00:04:41:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. Well, in in let's talk a little bit about that scene, that scenario that is happening in in Denver. And you had mentioned that we you know, we had that opportunity to meet, you know, this past June in there in Denver during that community bike ride that that Markus and Neal were, you know, had helped put together.

00:04:41:22 - 00:05:08:19
John Simmerman
And I think this was like the third year in a row that they had done that particular sort of Juneteenth celebration ride there in in the in the area. But after the ride, you wanted to show me something really cool, which was the Bleecker Street Protected Bikeway. And I think this is indicative of some of the positive stuff that is actually happening in in Denver.

00:05:08:21 - 00:05:31:04
John Simmerman
We're going to talk about something else that's really positive, which is the bike busses that are that are popping up. And in some of the other what I like to call software activity assets, the policies and the programs and the engagement activities. But this is an example of the amazing hardware that is starting to emerge in the city.

00:05:31:10 - 00:05:54:22
John Simmerman
And it's really super, super important. And what I want to do is I want to play in the background word while we're talking. I'll play a little bit at the beginning. There'll be some, there'll be a little bit of introduction, but I want to play the video of our bicycle ride because you wanted to show me Blake Street and then and you helped guide me to the Union Station so I could catch my bus back to Boulder again.

00:05:54:25 - 00:06:00:05
John Simmerman
So let's let's pull this up. Let's pull up this video. Here we go. Let's start at the beginning.

00:06:00:08 - 00:06:09:01
Allen Cowgill
So this used to be such a horrible way to try to get to Union Station. And yeah, when they put this in, it's it's just been great.

00:06:09:03 - 00:06:42:01
John Simmerman
So this is the Blake Street protected Bikeway brand new. I love it. He's just a look at the end what's great about this too and I'm going to turn the audio down now what's great about this is is that these are lighter, quicker, cheaper materials. They're still robust enough that they are or, you know, make it clear to motor vehicle drivers that, you know, this is the streetscape has changed, but this stuff can go down in a matter of months.

00:06:42:01 - 00:07:07:06
John Simmerman
You know, certainly the majority of the prep time is in the design side, the planning side, but then the actual installation is really relatively fast compared to having to put in, you know, actual, you know, formed concrete and pouring concrete. This type of material can happen very, very fast. You had mentioned that this has been huge for the city.

00:07:07:06 - 00:07:09:21
John Simmerman
Talked a little bit more about that. Expand upon that.

00:07:09:24 - 00:07:12:16
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, you know that this this bike lane.

00:07:12:23 - 00:07:13:24
John Simmerman
Really.

00:07:13:26 - 00:07:30:05
Allen Cowgill
Has had a major connection from the Five Points neighborhood into lower downtown in downtown. There used to be nothing here and it was it was terrifying. You could either go, you know, half mile out of your way to get on the south flat trail or kind of, you know, snake your way through downtown on these dangerous arterial streets.

00:07:30:08 - 00:07:47:01
Allen Cowgill
And I love this one. You can see there, if you look at the little the little post there is like little armadillo post, it's hard on one side. So if a car runs into it, bumps them back very aggressively. But on a bike, it's kind of a little more soft and curved on one side. So this is actually a kind of fun innovation that they're trying out in Denver.

00:07:47:01 - 00:08:09:00
Allen Cowgill
They haven't had these kinds of bike lanes protection yet, so I love it. I think it's great. As you said, the install goes quickly, it disrupts businesses less. It it gets in quickly and people have loved it. I see it full of scooters, full of people on bikes, even people in wheelchairs rolling on it all the time. It's been really popular for the neighborhood.

00:08:09:02 - 00:08:29:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, people seem to be loving it. Talk a little bit about that adjustment period that that drivers had for this because I'm inevitable. There's a resistance and there's people who complain and say, Oh my God, this is going to be the end of the world for me, either even from a driving perspective or from a business perspective.

00:08:29:03 - 00:08:33:21
John Simmerman
How, you know, this is months later. How was all that dust settled?

00:08:33:24 - 00:08:54:29
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, it's going fine. Honestly, there's I've heard, you know, there's certain times when you see bike infrastructure go in that you get a lot of objection to it just from the sake of change or the esthetics changing. I have not heard that at all for this particular bike lane or really any of the bike lanes that have gone in to downtown recently.

00:08:55:01 - 00:09:17:23
Allen Cowgill
It's been really popular. I mean, all all the data is shown both from studies in Denver and studies internationally and nationally that bike lanes are good for business. They help local businesses because people on bikes finish up more often and tend to patronize the businesses on the street. It's makes the streets safer for everybody, you know, West Marshall in our own CU Denver, we're really excited to have him in town.

00:09:17:25 - 00:09:27:12
Allen Cowgill
He did a study that show that bike lanes make the roads safer for drivers, pedestrians and people that bike and people on scooters. So I think it's a win win all around.

00:09:27:15 - 00:09:35:28
John Simmerman
Well, we believe that and we know that. But are you saying that the Denver businesses here in the downtown area kind of are clued in to that now?

00:09:36:00 - 00:09:58:26
Allen Cowgill
We're really lucky to have the downtown Denver partnership. They are very forward thinking organization that wants to have a vibrant downtown community to support our local businesses. And they get it. They they've been supportive of these multimodal connections. They've been very supportive of putting in more bike lanes. You know, downtown Denver is is like a lot of other downtowns that we've had a few struggles after COVID.

00:09:58:27 - 00:10:08:18
Allen Cowgill
Not as many people are coming downtown to work and they're seeing, you know, a lot of this multimodal transportation is a great way to help revitalize downtown. In addition, all the other work that they're doing.

00:10:08:21 - 00:10:42:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And as this video's continuing to flow here, we saw that we needed to get from one side of the street to the other side of the street. So we had that diagonal that that we sort of went through and then we're we're making our final way over to the Union Station area. And you mentioned something very important there in that was, you know, talking about the downtown Denver ship, you know, partnership to downtown Denver, partnership not Denver ship, but you know what I mean?

00:10:42:04 - 00:10:48:15
John Simmerman
But and they were the entity that was behind the Viva streets, too, Is that correct?

00:10:48:18 - 00:10:49:01
Allen Cowgill
Yeah.

00:10:49:01 - 00:10:50:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, they were.

00:10:50:13 - 00:11:11:09
Allen Cowgill
Know, we're really lucky to have them. They brought in the Denver Streets partnership as well to help do a lot of the logistics and promotions for the event. But they recognized the the benefits of activating streets of how much fun it is and how many people are going to come downtown and support our local businesses when we're having events like this.

00:11:11:12 - 00:11:45:10
John Simmerman
Yeah. And again, the downtown Denver partnership and the the Denver Streets Partnership is here to the Denver Streets Partnership. And again, these are INGOs. These are non-government entities, nonprofits. And in this case, the the the the downtown, you know, the the Denver business, the downtown Denver partnership is really looking at again, trying to activate and revitalize and and bring people in.

00:11:45:12 - 00:12:09:11
John Simmerman
And so Veeva stresses is an open streets event. It's just like we see similar views and those types of things and you all had a summer of them. They there was multiple opportunities to do this from May through August and May was a super cold month and June was a rainout event. And then finally in July, you had a beautiful, beautiful day.

00:12:09:11 - 00:12:13:09
John Simmerman
And I was able to to document that experience. That was a lot of fun.

00:12:13:12 - 00:12:39:21
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. Yeah. It turned out great. You know, so many people in the community that went down there loved it and had an absolute blast. You know, I took my six year old excuse me, five year old and five year old daughter down there and had an absolute blast. You know, she had never had the opportunity to ride or bike for more than, you know, little stints and some of the parks we have around Denver.

00:12:39:23 - 00:12:56:09
Allen Cowgill
And she got to all, you know, two or three miles and had an absolute blast. And we went to several a taco place afterward and had a great time. It was a really fun family day for our family that a hula hoop competition that Amy and I put on. There were just a lot of really fun things going on.

00:12:56:12 - 00:13:05:29
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. So, Elon, earlier you had mentioned the Denver bicycle lobby. What is that all about?

00:13:06:01 - 00:13:43:16
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, the Denver bicycle lobby is a very grassroots organization. We don't even have a501 C3. It's just a group of residents in Denver that are lobbying for, you know, safer, more sustainable transportation, not just biking. But we've gotten involved to help with pedestrian advocacy, safe streets, advocacy, accessibility, you know, even transit to a little bit. In Denver, it started really, you know, during a tragic summer when Alexis Bounds and a couple of other people were killed it within a span of a few weeks while biking in Denver.

00:13:43:18 - 00:14:07:10
Allen Cowgill
And it was founded by Rob Thomas, Jonathan FERTIG and John Rickey. And they put together a critical mass ride. And we had several hundred people come out and just kind of took over the streets and they had a a little email template that folks could use at the end of the ride to email, the mayor and the head of the Department of Transportation and a lot of our city council folks.

00:14:07:13 - 00:14:21:12
Allen Cowgill
And it got people's attention. It really did. They made it really easy for people to email them, just to say like, Hey, this isn't okay, the people are dying and we need safer streets and we need better bike infrastructure so that this doesn't happen again.

00:14:21:14 - 00:14:58:04
John Simmerman
You know, And in fact, if we take a look here on the at the very top, we see the Denver bicycle lobby candidate questionnaire responses. And, you know, it really gets to the point that it's a fairly politically active movement that you all have going on. You know, there you know, all of the organizations that we've talked about, you see that they're they understand you all understand at the organization's level as the individual activists level that you need to be politically active.

00:14:58:04 - 00:15:26:06
John Simmerman
You can't just be out there complaining about stuff and, you know, quote unquote, advocating for better stuff. You you all get really, really active and engaged in the political process. Talk a little bit about that and the fact that you all have had a recent election. And I guess the other organization that we should probably mention is is also Vamos, because they they did a whole bunch of candidate interviews as well.

00:15:26:06 - 00:15:41:15
John Simmerman
And I've had a RV stopper on on the channel here to talk about that program but yeah talk a little bit about that recent election and and what that has meant for creating more people oriented streets.

00:15:41:18 - 00:16:13:13
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. I think what we've realized, you know, is that there is so much potential to shape the conversation with our elected officials because ultimately when it comes down to it, a city's values can be seen in its budget, right? So when we see how money is being spent on, you know, ROE dollars versus by transit versus pedestrian dollars, we really start to have an idea of how much of an impact it can make by shifting some of our budget to multimodal transportation, more sustainable, more equitable transportation options.

00:16:13:13 - 00:16:36:27
Allen Cowgill
So we. DIBELLA We've really started to get to know our city council folks, you know, the mayor's office, too, to a lesser extent, and even gotten involved more in statewide politics, too. So we we've done everything from trying to shape the city budget. We got involved with several councilmembers, Councilwoman CdeBaca and Torres and councilman former Councilman Clark as well.

00:16:36:27 - 00:17:08:03
Allen Cowgill
And we had a big movement to try to decriminalize jaywalking here in Denver a few years ago. So we got very involved and we're part of the leadership team of that movement as well. So we recognize that there is a lot of power when we come together as a group. We we do have the ability to start changing policy or changing our streetscapes by supporting our great planners at the Department of Transportation Infrastructure here in Denver, by helping shape the budget, by helping shape the conversation when these bike lanes are going in as well.

00:17:08:03 - 00:17:23:16
Allen Cowgill
And I think a large part of that, too, and I'd be remiss for not saying it is our community of journalists here in Denver. We've also developed relationships with them and we're helping to kind of shape the conversation around how we're covering crashes, how we're covering new bike lanes going in and the budget as well.

00:17:23:19 - 00:17:45:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. Now I want to play a little bit of video from yesterday with you, new new Mayor Mike Johnston. And this is something that you had posted. Why don't you go ahead and set this up as to as to what this is all about here. And then we'll we'll sort of go backwards and play it from the beginning.

00:17:45:00 - 00:17:47:21
John Simmerman
So set this up. What is what is this all about?

00:17:47:23 - 00:18:11:21
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, so this is really exciting. This is the grand opening of the Larimer Street Bridge in Denver. We've got Mayor Mike Johnston, Councilman Chris Hines, who's a great multi-modal advocate here in Denver, and Adam Phipps, who's the director, executive director of the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. So this was a celebration. This was the opening of this bridge that's been under construction for a few years.

00:18:11:23 - 00:18:35:13
Allen Cowgill
And it was an exciting moment because you can see here when we zoom out, that used to be kind of a sewer, arterial sewer, just train cars on Despair Boulevard and they reshaped it. They a widen the sidewalks. They created bidirectional bike lane. They put in now one car lane on the bridge and even put in some public gathering spaces or benches and things like that.

00:18:35:13 - 00:18:57:09
Allen Cowgill
But it was part of a Denver bond package that started a while back that voters approve One of the many things that voters approved on there, and folks were really excited to celebrate the moment. Myself, I was standing next to Jake Cohen on the Secretary for our Citizens Advisory Board for the Department of Transportation. Jake is one of our board co-chairs, and we both got invited to this to help celebrate the Met.

00:18:57:09 - 00:19:22:10
Allen Cowgill
It's a big win for Denver. It's not just a bridge. It's really a connection for people to come from downtown Denver, specifically lower downtown Denver to the Eraring campus, which is our biggest college campus. It's actually three colleges, many College of Denver, Metro State, University of Colorado, Denver, all sit on this huge campus that you can see in the background and you see so many students walking, biking that'll take transit in the downtown.

00:19:22:10 - 00:19:37:02
Allen Cowgill
And then they'll have to walk over here or take their bike over here. And it's a much more inviting space to really connect the two areas that have really been divided by Super Boulevard for for quite some time because it is a very unpleasant street to cross.

00:19:37:05 - 00:19:44:02
John Simmerman
Yeah. Okay. Let's press play here and actually hear from the mayor.

00:19:44:04 - 00:20:01:15
Denver Mayor, Mike Johnston
Thank you all so much for being here. Delighted to get to join you. Thank you for joining us. At this historic opening, I am joined by a number of incredible leaders who helped make this entire project possible. I'm delighted to get to be here and celebrate its completion. We all had a part in this, which is in the 2017 bond.

00:20:01:15 - 00:20:29:12
Denver Mayor, Mike Johnston
We all voted for this specific project to be able to make this connection possible. I'd say there are a couple of things I'm very excited about today. One is we know one of the great crown jewels of Denver is the Aurora campus. It is the place where I think the largest number of first time college students in the city are educated, is the greatest population of young people of color who are getting educated in higher ed in Colorado, Our house is right behind us and we really want to open up the door of opportunity for all of those students.

00:20:29:12 - 00:20:55:25
Denver Mayor, Mike Johnston
We want to open up that door by bringing them right into downtown Denver. And so this connector finally helped create the thriving, vibrant community of the Aurora campus with the thriving, vibrant community of downtown in a way that makes it much easier for people to walk like a role any place that they want to. And so we are estimated that there will be three or 5000 students a day now who will come to and from this campus through this pedestrian walkway.

00:20:55:26 - 00:21:15:18
Denver Mayor, Mike Johnston
And that means people that are walking, people that are biking, people that are rolling, which both makes it safer, makes it less impact on the climate, makes it better impact on our environment and our ecosystem, and provide safe path for people to get to and from all the places they want to go. So we think this is not only a great opportunity for area and for downtown, it's a great model is what we hope to do in places all around the city.

00:21:15:18 - 00:21:20:15
Denver Mayor, Mike Johnston
So I'm delighted to be here. I'm going to give it over to a person who had far more to do with actually making this happen.

00:21:20:18 - 00:21:51:04
John Simmerman
Amazing. Yeah, very, very cool to see this. I'm also going to play a little bit of the video that you shot with David Pulsifer. David of course, is is part of the the Denver Department of Transportation Infrastructure, the design group. But that just echoes exactly what you just said of just how important this connection is. And these images.

00:21:51:04 - 00:22:16:05
John Simmerman
Two of of seeing what it's like being able to get there, because these are ultimately very close destinations. These are not very far apart. And it's so incredibly important for us to see these opportunities where you have, you know, meaningful role, you know, destinations and connectivity that can take place. So go ahead and take it or take it away.

00:22:16:09 - 00:22:18:19
John Simmerman
Tell the show or tell us what we're looking at.

00:22:18:21 - 00:22:31:11
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, Yeah. You can send one thing. I'll tell it here. If you look on the right of the screen, you can see there's some green infrastructure there where run off is going to be going into there and it's going to be kind of filtering the water that'll drain into Cherry Creek and things like that. But you can see here it's great.

00:22:31:11 - 00:22:52:17
Allen Cowgill
We've got there's the campus in front of you there and we're coming back around. You can see there's a bike signal specifically for people that are biking. We've got the bi directional bike lane on one side, the car traveling on the other side. We've got really nice planters and concrete protecting the bike lane. It was kind of fun that they shut down the intersection, just put it on a bike, only signal for us to go across is kind of the grand opening.

00:22:52:19 - 00:22:53:11
John Simmerman
Right?

00:22:53:13 - 00:23:12:09
Allen Cowgill
But just want to call out. You know, David and his team, Riley was the planner that did this. And it's just such an elegant design, you know, the way that they kind of incorporated both the multimodal transportation elements and the little bit of community space there with the bridge crossing and crossing over Spear. And I just I love it.

00:23:12:09 - 00:23:42:29
Allen Cowgill
It's going to be a really great addition for Denver for generations to come and shout out to David in particular. He is one of the most amazing fighters I've worked with. He bikes all the way up from Littleton every day. He lives down there and bike commutes, every type of weather he puts studs on in the winter. And he's really one of the planners that's walking, walking the walk of the task that he's doing, so to speak, are walking the talk, I should say.

00:23:43:01 - 00:24:01:29
Allen Cowgill
So we're really lucky to have him and his leadership and most of his teams like that. Most of the planners that I speak with here in Denver, a lot of them don't have cars. They rely on bikes, they really on transit and they really get it. And it's really great to see the up and coming generation of folks that are really shaping the city that really understand this stuff so well.

00:24:01:29 - 00:24:44:11
John Simmerman
It's fantastic. That's great. This is just so freaking cool and awesome that you have this. And I want to scrawled on your X feed, your Twitter feed. I can't get used to seeing X, but yeah, you reposted this from Denver bicycle lobby that basically said that you just mentioned earlier. You channeled the fact that you're a reflection of a city's values is in their their budget and yet holy heck you guys are facing a proposed 42% cut in your budget for doing this good work.

00:24:44:13 - 00:24:47:19
John Simmerman
What the hell is going on? Yeah, you.

00:24:47:19 - 00:24:58:12
Allen Cowgill
Know, I think I'll take the good news first, right? The good news is I think we've had over 130 or so miles of new bike lanes added all on the horse.

00:24:58:12 - 00:25:15:08
John Simmerman
Right there was right there, though I know that not all all of that 130 some odd miles are as good as what we saw on Blake Street. That's a lot of those are nothing more than painted bike lanes, which are not considered all ages and abilities. So I just want to clarify that.

00:25:15:11 - 00:25:35:18
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's an important thing to add in. There has been some really good infrastructure put in. I still think we have a ways to go and you know, I love the concept of our neighborhood bike ways I could say, you know, similar to what I'll be at Bike Streets. I said, I think we could use a lot more dividers on those neighborhood bike ways to really even reduce traffic more.

00:25:35:24 - 00:25:56:12
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, painted bike lanes aren't really cutting it. I typically would would never consider biking with my kiddos on on a painted bike lane and I know a lot of adults in Denver that that would consider it as well because they don't feel it's comfortable enough. So yes we have tremendous things to celebrate about those 30 miles. But yeah, there's definitely some room for improvement too.

00:25:56:14 - 00:26:20:16
John Simmerman
Yeah. So okay, so now we're faced with a budget crisis in the midst of momentum, having just gone through this election, you have elected a mayor who you believe is, you know, if we believe his words that he just said is very much behind this is is Denver a strong mayor system or a weak mayor system?

00:26:20:19 - 00:26:36:27
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, Denver has a strong mayor system. So the mayor really gets to dictate the budget. The city council has influence on the budget. But it really you know, the departments are run by the mayor and the budget is ultimately painted by their plan, by the mayor initially. Right.

00:26:36:29 - 00:26:41:14
John Simmerman
Okay. So all right, Mayor, we got elected just.

00:26:41:14 - 00:27:03:13
Allen Cowgill
Elected in July. You know, he's really you know, which I think is important. He's really been focused on the housing issue here in Denver. You know, housing policy is really a transportation policy. So I'm excited about the work that he's doing right now. Yeah, But yeah, I do think there's room for improvement of of funding, more multimodal transportation, whether it's biking, transit or pedestrian.

00:27:03:13 - 00:27:26:17
Allen Cowgill
We're really excited to have Initiative three or seven passed, largely due to the leadership of Jill Dougherty at the Denver Streets Partnership. Jill is leading a committee right now to talk about, hey, what tweaks can we make to make the fee structure to that little more equitable funding so we don't have, you know, certain people that might have sidewalks on three sides of their house paying several thousand dollars a year maybe, you know, capping that in some way.

00:27:26:24 - 00:27:46:17
Allen Cowgill
There's a lot of conversations about what could be done there. But I think the most important thing to know here is that we're on the right track with sidewalks in Denver, thanks to Jill's leadership. Just getting this initiative passed, which I think is really exciting. But I think there's still a lot that we can do on vision Zero, on multimodal transportation.

00:27:46:20 - 00:28:05:08
Allen Cowgill
As you can see on the slide that's up here, you know, the people that I have the highest percentage basis of commuting by bike or the folks with the lowest income. I see it all the time on our arterial streets here. People going up and down the sidewalk on federal or Colfax Boulevard. We can tell they're just trying to make their way to work or shopping and things like that.

00:28:05:12 - 00:28:09:16
Allen Cowgill
And we have so much room to improve their experience as residents as well.

00:28:09:18 - 00:28:33:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, I get it. I get that cities have a multitude of very, very serious issues that they're dealing with, with affordable housing, with homelessness, with, you know, to deter to death. But this slide drives the point home of that. When we talk about affordability, when we talk about housing, it's not just the cost of housing, it's housing slash transportation.

00:28:33:12 - 00:29:02:07
John Simmerman
It's both. And that's why you that's why you cannot forget that, you know, investing in active transportation infrastructure is so linked to affordability when it comes to housing, because it's it's the household budget is, you know, those two biggest things that you have there are, you know, your rent and, you know, you know, what's your transportation? How can you, you know, can you walk and you bike?

00:29:02:07 - 00:29:15:02
John Simmerman
Can you use public transit or are you committed to a car payment and all the associated costs that come with, you know, auto dependance and car dependency?

00:29:15:04 - 00:29:32:21
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, I don't know if you saw John, but there was a viral post going around this week. It was a mom from the Midwest. She had posted her monthly budget And, you know, housing was a big chunk on there. You know, you could see that was struggling to make ends meet. And a large chunk of it was was the car and the fuel costs.

00:29:32:21 - 00:29:57:20
Allen Cowgill
And, you know, on her list of things that she couldn't afford but needed to was, you know, I think it was like 500 bucks in a car repair. And for folks that are living paycheck to paycheck, I think she listed on there she was making $20 an hour, $500 for a car repair is a very big hit. So I think we do need to give people choices like not everyone can can choose to bike or take transit, but we need to give people that option for for those that can't.

00:29:57:22 - 00:30:24:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think it it just gets lost so often, you know in these political discussions and when you start looking at city budgets and you start, you know, having these conversations about, okay, well what where do we cut we need to cut our budget based on the revenues coming in to retire. And, you know, immediately they sort of go to well, you know, let's let's cut back on this.

00:30:24:27 - 00:31:17:25
John Simmerman
It doesn't seem like it's a good return on investment and will shift it over to these other areas, all the while realizing that you could fund the entire bicycle network within any given city for a basically about the same amount of cost for one major auto centric intersection or interchange. You know, it's just like it's it's really it's just not that expensive to actually build a place that is more people oriented versus the auto infrastructure is just incredibly I mean we talk about hundreds of millions of dollars for an intersection that could, you know, again, lighter, quicker, cheaper, be able to do some of those neighborhood Greenway or Bikeway drivers and, you know, just get

00:31:17:25 - 00:31:32:17
John Simmerman
them in. And then just like the Blake Street, you know lighter, quicker, cheaper get something in lighter materials, get them in, you know, reserve that real estate. You can always come back in and build the pretty stuff like you had on the Larimer Bridge there.

00:31:32:20 - 00:31:47:03
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, yeah. We saw that here in Denver the I 25 and Broadway interchange was rebuilt a little while ago and I think to the tune of $80 million, you know, and that could have built out the entire Denver bike network. So yeah and.

00:31:47:04 - 00:32:11:19
John Simmerman
That's even that's even cheap. I mean I'm I'm a stone's throw away from one that I think was 320 million. You know it's just auto infrastructure is so incredibly expensive, but they don't blink an eye at it. You know, it's just like, oh, well, we're going to you know, we're going to leverage some federal dollars through the state and and we're going to be able to make this happen and we'll pay a portion of it.

00:32:11:21 - 00:32:40:27
John Simmerman
But even the city is portion of the auto and, you know, auto centric infrastructure. Auto oriented infrastructure is incredibly expensive. And like you said, yeah, you could you could fund, you know, that first phase of the entire bicycle network that that first phase of safer pedestrian crossings. You know, in lighter, quicker, cheaper materials with that same amount of money or even less.

00:32:40:29 - 00:33:00:08
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. We're going through that conversation in Denver right now. Again, we're talking about expanding Paint Boulevard, which is our highway that runs from I-70 to Denver International Airport. You know, the airport is going to take advantage of a lot of potential federal funds to spend that. But Denver will still be on the hook for 70 or $80 million at least.

00:33:00:10 - 00:33:21:00
Allen Cowgill
Right. So, you know, we think about what kinds of things we could do for safer pedestrian crossings and things like that in the neighborhood that Paine Boulevard is being expanded in versus just saving five or 10 minutes off of commuters time just initially for the first five years because it's going to be just as crowded, right, because of induced demand after it's in there for a little while.

00:33:21:02 - 00:33:41:16
Allen Cowgill
And we saw that on May 25. I mean, one piece of good news that we have is thanks to the Denver Streets partnership, Joe looking to free Molly McKinley is we pushed back pretty hard against I-25 being expanded in central Denver and that is a really big victory. It goes through communities of color like Sun Valley and Valverde.

00:33:41:19 - 00:34:04:24
Allen Cowgill
And if you look at the health data in these neighborhoods, it is it is so horrifically worse than the rest of Denver because they're within that half mile, a quarter mile of the interstate. And it's a really big victory that the Colorado Department of Transportation, I really applaud them for choosing not to pursue this interstate highway expansion right through the middle of our city.

00:34:04:24 - 00:34:10:25
Allen Cowgill
So that that is one piece of good news that we are starting to learn a little bit in some cases about this stuff.

00:34:10:27 - 00:34:41:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And I know the Rocky Mountain Institute also got involved and helped build a tool that demonstrated that expanding I-25 in that segment was going to result in X amount of additional, you know, carbon emissions and and really, you know, helped create a freeway fighter tool that is now being or is now being used, you know, in other locations, too, to be able to say, hey, no, no, no, no, no.

00:34:41:22 - 00:34:50:13
John Simmerman
If we're expanding. Lane Miles, this is the impact. And you guys are all glossing over the fact that it will have a negative impact.

00:34:50:15 - 00:35:11:29
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, and we're really lucky to have RMI coming out with tools like that and furthering the conversation as well. And also, you know, back when Denver had a streetsblog, a local streetsblog, Dave Sachs and Andy Bosman really kind of led the charge on that as well. Looking at we had expanded the southern section of I-25 here in Denver, we call it the T-Rex Project.

00:35:12:01 - 00:35:29:29
Allen Cowgill
And through that project we saw that traffic delays were just as bad only five years later. Right. So we're like, hey, this is going to fix congestion in reality because of reduced demand. We know it doesn't work, but we even have the data here in Denver to show that it's just as bad as it was. Yeah, within a few years.

00:35:30:01 - 00:35:53:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well, earlier we were talking a little bit about the neighborhoods and the neighborhood bikeways and the the things that we have been seeing that have been popping up around the country and around the globe. One of the really positive trends that has really taken off in the last couple of years has been the the idea of a bike bus.

00:35:53:07 - 00:36:06:06
John Simmerman
And so I wanted to have you here to talk a little bit about the bike bus that you have been behind. But all of that is the setup. You take it from here. What to, you know, kind of what inspired you?

00:36:06:09 - 00:36:31:18
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, Coach Fall to it was seeing coach photos, Twitter posts and you know his ticktock post on the bike bus. He started Alameda Elementary in Portland and getting to learn more about even before him what they were doing in Barcelona with the busy bus and it's just like that looks really cool. And I saw it going on and last winter I was like, What if we did this at our school?

00:36:31:21 - 00:36:49:18
Allen Cowgill
And I started talking about it with some other dads that I saw were bringing their kids to school and cargo bikes or their kids were biking next to them on regular bikes was like, Hey, do you think this would be fun? Do you think this would work here? And one of my solo parents, so adults at the elementary school was like, Yeah, let's do this.

00:36:49:18 - 00:37:06:12
Allen Cowgill
And so we reached out to the school administration and the PTA were like, Hey, we want to try this. We we for four bike to school day, which I think like May 3rd or May 4th last year. And they're like, Yeah, it sounds great. We'll help you advertise it, right? So the first thing we had to do is find out a safe route, right?

00:37:06:15 - 00:37:28:27
Allen Cowgill
And a route that would be relevant for a portion of the school. So you can see here on the screen we picked 25th Avenue. It's very quiet by fellow dad. Tom uses it to bike in with his kids everyday to school. And Tom and I were like, Now let's use this. So we went up and down. It literally went back and forth several times, didn't see a single vehicle on it.

00:37:28:27 - 00:37:36:06
Allen Cowgill
Around the time that the kids school was starting, I was like, Yeah, this feels like a pretty safe place to go and get things started.

00:37:36:09 - 00:37:45:06
John Simmerman
Fantastic. And so, you know, we end up launching it. This is Wednesday, November eight, though. What's this about? This, this.

00:37:45:09 - 00:38:00:21
Allen Cowgill
This this was the original sign we used to put up the sign. You know, my career is in sales and marketing, so it's like we have to let people know about this. We have to raise awareness for it, right? Yeah. So I went to our local print shop and put this out at the time. It said Wednesday, May 3rd or fourth, whatever it was.

00:38:00:23 - 00:38:20:09
Allen Cowgill
But you can see I've just been changing the date and manually writing some stuff on there. I've even updated the time. I'm too cheap to go and get another sign. Just stretch it out and in our new start time for that, with the earlier start time with the school bus, put it next to the gate when we started school so parents could see it and I would stand next to it and they'd be like, What's this thing about?

00:38:20:09 - 00:38:37:01
Allen Cowgill
You know? And I just tell the story of what we were going to do. And yeah, I thought like on the first day that like we might have like ten or 12 kids that would come out. But the first time we did it, it was a lot of fun. We probably had, gosh, I don't know, I'd say maybe 50 kids and parents that came out for that first ride.

00:38:37:01 - 00:38:37:07
Allen Cowgill
It was a.

00:38:37:07 - 00:38:52:03
John Simmerman
Blast. Wow. Wow. And here's your actual website here, the Brown Bike Boston.com. You set that up. And so you've got all the all the details here. How frequently are we doing the the bike bus?

00:38:52:06 - 00:39:12:25
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. For us, you know, it's twice a month during the warmer weather months and we're shooting for once a month during the colder weather months, you know, tending, you know how the weather is pending, the temperatures and things like that. We're still trying to figure out, you know, what is that threshold? I think with any ice on the streets or snow on the streets, we'll probably forego that.

00:39:12:27 - 00:39:29:12
Allen Cowgill
I think as adults, some folks are comfortable riding, but I'm not comfortable taking my kiddos out in the snow. But I think temperatures I think our gut says nothing lower than 25 degrees. The schools cut off for using the playground is 20 degrees. So I figured that out a little bit. But we're excited to see how this goes.

00:39:29:12 - 00:39:32:16
Allen Cowgill
This is our first full year of doing it and trying it out.

00:39:32:19 - 00:40:11:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. How many parents and how many kids are sort of routinely riding now that the bike busses has gotten going? And this is the same question that I posed to Cymbalta when I've had him on, because ultimately we'd love to see kids riding their bikes every day and just up the road from you in Boulder. I mean, especially at the middle school level, you see hundreds of bikes on a daily basis parked there because, you know, they you know, or they're fortunate enough to be able to have enough safe routes that, you know, kids can literally be free range kids.

00:40:11:00 - 00:40:25:04
John Simmerman
And so they they routinely ride in elementary school and middle school and high school and then on into college. How many people, you know, at Brown are starting to to ride more frequently, you know, on the non bike bus days.

00:40:25:06 - 00:40:48:18
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. You know so I'll start out by saying one of our bike bus leaders Dan his kids are a little bit older than mine are and he's been at the elementary school for a while. He said when he started he was literally the only person that would show up on a bike ride. So and now there's probably especially on the warmer weather days, there's probably a dozen parents that are showing up on cargo bikes and dropping their kids off.

00:40:48:18 - 00:41:12:09
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. Which is which is awesome. And sometimes when the weather's really nice, even more than that. So it's been evolving over time. Last year was our first year at the elementary school with my kids in the younger grades, and I'd say there are typically maybe four or five bikes out on the bike racks beforehand. Since we've started the bike bus, I think half the game is just showing people that biking to school as possible.

00:41:12:09 - 00:41:29:13
Allen Cowgill
And that's my hope with the bike busses, even though we're not able to do it every week just based on our constraints of volunteers and bandwidth and funding, it's showing kids that it's possible. And we've anecdotally, I've seen a lot more kids biking to school and maybe 20 or 30 kids on the bike racks on on warmer weather days.

00:41:29:13 - 00:41:53:07
Allen Cowgill
And it's just a blast. And for any parent that's thinking about it, you can see my smile there. It's really hard not to smile when you do it, just seeing how much fun the kids are having. It's just an absolute blast. And you can see one of our parents there wrote in Brown is about 30% choice. So about 30% of the people from our elementary school don't live in the neighborhood that are within a mile of the school.

00:41:53:07 - 00:42:08:06
Allen Cowgill
Right. So it's fun to see you even had parents coming from the other side of town that are finding some of the new neighborhood bikeway routes that have recently been put in in the last few years. So it's kind of fun. It's forcing them to discover these new ways to get around the neighborhood by bike.

00:42:08:09 - 00:42:31:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, and that's kind of the reason why I wanted to emphasize, you know, the neighborhood Bikeway concept is that pretty much all the images that we've seen, there hasn't been a single bit of of true, quote unquote, base protected bicycle infrastructure. That's not what this is about. Your route that you chose is is is a route that's a quieter community residential street.

00:42:31:24 - 00:42:36:01
John Simmerman
And really the key thing is, is low volume. Low speed.

00:42:36:03 - 00:42:53:06
Allen Cowgill
Yeah it's the RV stopper by streets model here Denver right is finding these streets that people can always see already used today that are part of the bikeway network and this is 25th Avenue two blocks over is 23rd Avenue actually has a painted bike lane. But I don't feel comfortable taking the kid on The kids on that street.

00:42:53:08 - 00:43:16:14
Allen Cowgill
The speed limit is 30 miles an hour. There's no protection. And you know, you've got a fairly decent volume of cars commuting through there in the morning. So, yeah, this this is kind of our our bread and butter is finding these quiet streets that are easy and safe for the kids to get to school. Yeah, I was having a conversation this morning with a parent that was like, yeah, the bike bus know kind of showed us how we get there.

00:43:16:16 - 00:43:20:01
Allen Cowgill
And, you know, we're using it now to bike to school, which is fun.

00:43:20:03 - 00:43:49:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. And this is a picture of the bike rack that is there. And yeah, I would say we're, we're due for new bike racks. Yeah. Let's get the standard. Schaffer You know, upside down staple bike racks, folks. And let's expand that. And like I said, you know the example up the road there in Boulder is they literally have hundreds of the Shafer bike racks, the upside down staple standard bike racks.

00:43:50:06 - 00:44:02:02
John Simmerman
And it's just amazing when you see them all filled up by the time the school gets started and and they continue to ride, you know, throughout even even the snowy months. Yeah.

00:44:02:04 - 00:44:18:14
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. This is one of the three bike racks we have at Brown Elementary or I should say Brown International Academy where an I B school. I should use the technical name for the school. But this is a non bike bus day. Right. And before you maybe see four bikes on the rack and all three of the racks were full on that day.

00:44:18:14 - 00:44:29:11
Allen Cowgill
So it was really great to see, you know. Yes, we could absolutely use an upgrade. Unfortunately, school budgets right now here in Denver are pretty slim. So we're going to have to do some bake sales, so to speak.

00:44:29:14 - 00:44:36:29
John Simmerman
It's a let's let's do some buy brown, you know, school go fund me.

00:44:37:01 - 00:44:55:05
Allen Cowgill
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We'd love to do that. And I'd love to see a bike crowd out front of school. You can see the adult bike rack. There is one of the teachers that bikes in every day. It was really fun. The first day we had a bike bus, she was actually manning the gate that day and welcoming students into school, and she was so caught up in the moment.

00:44:55:05 - 00:45:13:12
Allen Cowgill
As a person, that's like seeing all these kids coming to school. She actually got emotional in that moment. It was so exciting for her and for me too, you know, And it was really great to see that moment of seeing the potential of just, you know, the safety and numbers concept of the bike bus and how much it's helped get more kids biking.

00:45:13:15 - 00:45:34:05
John Simmerman
Well, and I know that you got your inspiration by seeing some of the others that were out there. And again, Sam, I profiled him here on the podcast and on the channel, as well as Megan Ramey up in Hood River. You know, she had been doing her bike train for for some time, walk through the, you know, sort of the the the steps that you took.

00:45:34:06 - 00:45:51:28
John Simmerman
You had mentioned, you know, get together with another dad. We thought about a route we took, you know, took a look at that. But then you also kind of said, okay, let's let's kind of, you know, organize ourselves and make sure that we are able to communicate, you know, to the kids and to the volunteer parents, you know, some of the things that you're trying to do.

00:45:52:00 - 00:46:10:22
John Simmerman
So walk us through, you know, sort of, you know, where you're coming from in terms of putting all these steps together and anything else that another parent or group of parents or even, you know, like in the case of Sam, who's a teacher, you know, might consider if they want to do a bike bus in their neighborhood.

00:46:10:24 - 00:46:29:09
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. I think number one is building the crew, building the people that are involved and interested in it. And we're really lucky that we've not only had parents get involved with it, but we've had community members, people from the bicycle advocacy community, people that live in the neighborhood, that have volunteered, that have nothing to do with the school besides living nearby.

00:46:29:12 - 00:46:48:01
Allen Cowgill
So, you know, Ryan White is one of our amazing volunteers. He's been out for a lot of the the ride that we've had. We've had bicycle Colorado staff members come out to help us bicycle Colorado alumni, even people from our neighborhood organization that are a few retired folks that have come out to help. And so, you know, number one was getting getting by and building the crew.

00:46:48:01 - 00:47:03:20
Allen Cowgill
Number two was figuring out the route. We love quiet streets in our case. And number three was kind of going through the logistics of it, Right, is like, okay, how are we going to keep the kids safe? You our first few our first ride, we didn't have a ton of volunteers and we just thought that the kids would, you know, follow all the.

00:47:03:20 - 00:47:05:08
John Simmerman
Rules of the road.

00:47:05:11 - 00:47:15:03
Allen Cowgill
In the case of the other kids, that was not the case. It was like, we need to get more people out here monitoring all these intersections. Right? That was a huge epiphany moment for me. It's like, all right, we need we need some more help kind of thing.

00:47:15:03 - 00:47:19:08
John Simmerman
So in other words, you say you're saying it's sort of like herding cats. Yeah, it.

00:47:19:08 - 00:47:48:03
Allen Cowgill
Is. It is. And the kids are great and they're amazing and they're having so much fun. But yeah, you know, they're kids, right? So what we've done is we have four stop signs along the way where it's not a four way stop, right where we don't have the right away. So we're having one volunteer at each of those monitor those intersections to encourage the kids to stop a or more importantly, to make sure that that the kids are not going through of the cars coming, right?

00:47:48:05 - 00:47:48:23
John Simmerman
Yeah, right.

00:47:48:26 - 00:48:10:06
Allen Cowgill
And then we have one collector street that we cross at the end of the ride, and we have everybody get together in one big clump of a group and then we have some parents go out and just plug the intersection. And once we share the cars or stop, we'll have the kids cross and we'll once we get to the block or the school, as we go around on the sidewalk, because that block is probably the most dangerous traffic place in the city.

00:48:10:11 - 00:48:16:27
Allen Cowgill
You know, we're like any school for the 10 minutes before school. I guess folks are rushing there. So we just have the kids go on the sidewalk. It works great. Yeah.

00:48:16:27 - 00:48:32:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. What I find as funny is that yeah, I see here after we cross lald, you know, stay on the sidewalk where we can get there because you're trying to get to, as you were saying, you're setting it up by saying it's one of the more dangerous places. And that's sort of the that irony is sort of funny.

00:48:32:17 - 00:48:41:25
John Simmerman
It's funny. Not funny is that our most dangerous places, you know, for our kids trying to get to school is the area right around the school.

00:48:41:28 - 00:49:11:12
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, it really is. I was having a conversation with our crossing guard today. We have two of them. Yeah. And we're speaking with her and she's like, a lot of parents just aren't paying attention when they're coming in or when they're leaving. And really, we should be so cautious. We should be on pins and needles for anyone that's driving around the school because you know there's going to be a kids there and you know that kids are not capable of having that level of cognition that adults do to really be sure to slow down and look both ways because they're kids.

00:49:11:12 - 00:49:30:12
Allen Cowgill
They they're going to run out in the street sometimes and to the best, the ability of us as parents, we try to protect them and make sure that they don't do that. It happened to me a few weeks ago where my daughter was like, okay, still a stop there. And she even though I said stop there, she just kept going into the intersection and a parent wasn't really paying attention and started to pull into an had to scream to get both of them to stop.

00:49:30:12 - 00:49:40:01
Allen Cowgill
And it's terrifying, right? Schools are very dangerous places when we're focusing our infrastructure on having it be convenient for car drop offs and pickups.

00:49:40:04 - 00:50:11:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, and that's one of the reasons we're seeing sort of globally an international movement of the school streets program where essentially, you know, for blocks around a school, you know, I don't want to say blocks, that's an overexaggeration. But you know what I mean is the the blocks around a school in the immediate area at the school is is essentially completely closed off so that you you eliminate that whole parent drop off scenario.

00:50:11:04 - 00:50:42:05
John Simmerman
And and I don't want to blame parents. I mean, you know, it's they're doing this because they you know, they, you know, want their kids to be able to arrive to school safely, etc.. But in doing so, it it creates exactly what you're saying, a dangerous situation for literally every other kid. And it also sort of ignores the fact that the most dangerous thing that that a parent can do is actually put a kid in a car and take them somewhere.

00:50:42:10 - 00:50:53:08
John Simmerman
You know, that's you know, when you look at the number one area of of where injuries and fatalities come from, kids is actually riding in cars and being in car crashes and collisions.

00:50:53:11 - 00:51:10:16
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. Yeah. And in our elementary school drop off, it's it's really set up for convenience. So parents can drop their kids right off the gate and they walk five feet from the car door to the fence. And I understand that you as a parent want something that's that's going to be safe for your kids, Right. To to get them in the school.

00:51:10:16 - 00:51:29:26
Allen Cowgill
But if we change the paradigm a little bit, instead of focusing on convenience and making that street safer, we can have a much better experience. If we had parents maybe park a block or two away and then walk their kid to the gate or things like that. But unfortunately, you know, we're not really set up to prioritize that right now at our school and most schools around Denver.

00:51:29:29 - 00:51:30:22
Allen Cowgill
Yeah.

00:51:30:25 - 00:51:49:13
John Simmerman
Now were stopped on this particular image because it makes me smile and it's something that when I interviewed Sam Coach Balto, I realized just how important the music aspect was. So apparently music is important with the Brown Bike Bus as well.

00:51:49:15 - 00:52:09:09
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, it is. Coach Balto. You know, even messaging him over Twitter for months now and he's awesome. He's been such an amazing mentor for me and he's like, Hey, music is key. You got your music. You sent me links to some, you know, speakers that I can consider and things like that. And it really is it just makes such a positive, fun experience.

00:52:09:09 - 00:52:28:27
Allen Cowgill
You know, my one of my co-leaders Tom says, like, hey, it's like we get to have a party every two weeks that just happens to move down 25th Avenue. It's a blast, you know, And the music, it does make it a lot of fun. So for anyone starting a bike bus, I'd say get a portable Bluetooth speaker and it it it's fun.

00:52:28:27 - 00:52:36:06
Allen Cowgill
You see the kids kind of dancing on their bikes and things like that. Some of the times they're singing along and that kind of thing. It's it's a blast. Yeah, yeah.

00:52:36:09 - 00:53:01:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. That's good stuff. Is there anything that we haven't yet talked about today? It doesn't have to be about the brown bike bus, but anything at all, you know, to sort of close us out. Is there anything that we've missed about the area, the work that you all are doing and, you know, and this movement to try to create safer streets for everyone in the Denver area?

00:53:01:15 - 00:53:27:16
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, I think, you know, one thing about the break for us that we haven't solved the problem for is how do we make it more equitable, right. There is a large percentage of kids in our neighborhood that don't have bikes, right? So my wife has actually been taking leadership on this, Kristin, and I'm really proud of her. She's been reaching out to nonprofits like, Hey, how can we get donations to these kids that don't have bikes that they can participate in so they can start to ride to school?

00:53:27:16 - 00:53:49:17
Allen Cowgill
You know, one other thing that that I'm trying to understand is we have this thing in Denver called the inverted L. Right. We and I think most cities have this you have the neighborhoods that are more affluent, that have historically gotten the resources and things like that. In my head, I'm like, how do we roll out bike, bus, You know, Jason Bicycle, Colorado has had this conversation with me.

00:53:49:19 - 00:54:13:09
Allen Cowgill
How do we roll this out across the city so more people can do this, especially in neighborhoods that have historically been underinvested in that they don't necessarily have the resources. So that's that's something I'm struggling with. I don't have the answer for. But trying to find out how do we give them better bike infrastructure, how do we give them better resources to be able to participate in fund active transportation, things like this that, you know, I don't think we're there yet.

00:54:13:11 - 00:55:03:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, to sort of lean into this aspect of the that relationship and this is a conversation I recently had with with Chris Brown, with the Dutch Cycling Embassy, and he talked about the fact that oftentimes when we see, you know, the the the cargo bike scenario and the parents with with, you know, moving the kids around in the cargo bike, you also have to step back and say if they're still carting the kids around in a cargo bike when they're already at the age when they, you know, could actually be riding themselves to school, then it may be an indication that the parent is is not comfortable with the

00:55:03:08 - 00:55:39:03
John Simmerman
the riding conditions to be able to let the kid ride. You know, either supervised or unsupervised to school, in other words, is sort of an indication that, yeah, that's cool. They're riding the bike via cargo bike better than driving. But at the same time, it's an indication that we're not yet there yet of having, you know, kids be free range kids and kids being able to, you know, get around their city in their community and be able to get to meaningful destinations like school, like the park, like their friends and place on their own.

00:55:39:05 - 00:55:57:25
Allen Cowgill
That's one of the biggest things that that tugs at me as a parent right now is we are we're a turn. Family's got a GSD in a city. We love those bikes and I don't know what I'm going to do when my kids get too big for that bike. Probably around, you know, age ten, 11, 12.

00:55:57:28 - 00:56:01:01
John Simmerman
It's like, what will you do? What's your purpose?

00:56:01:03 - 00:56:24:23
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, yeah. Like, how do I get them around, right? Safely, Comfortably. Do I feel comfortable with them biking the high school? Right. A lot of our neighborhood bikeways are massive improvements for adults. I'm really grateful for all the work of all the folks and our Transportation department that have that have put those through. But we're not there yet at the level of comfort and safety.

00:56:24:23 - 00:56:46:10
Allen Cowgill
For me as a parent that I would feel comfortable letting my kids bike on them in five years or so, we're just not there. It's it's it's still it's an improvement. It's very I'm very grateful for them, but we're not there yet in terms of truly making our streets safe and accessible and comfortable for starting at age seven right now, right there.

00:56:46:13 - 00:57:13:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it's a little bit of an interesting dilemma, you know, for parents who, you know, at first, you know, it's it's like especially in our North American paradigm of of we we drive our kids everywhere, you know, and it's like, oh, well, we're going to change that paradigm. And now it's not going to be you're driving your kids everywhere now we're going to be biking them to these meaningful destinations, etc..

00:57:13:03 - 00:57:42:16
John Simmerman
It's a whole nother thing to be like, Oh yeah, now they have the skills and the confidence and the and the infrastructure is there and it's like, okay, buddy, you know how helpful and be safe. That's a huge step for North American parents. Whereas in the case of like Dutch and Danish parents, they're like, you know, no, no, no.

00:57:42:17 - 00:57:53:20
John Simmerman
I mean, go, go, go. You know, start working on those skills. And by the time they're 12, they have to pass their exams to demonstrate that they can get around their entire city on their own.

00:57:53:22 - 00:58:13:16
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. Yeah. We're it's definitely a paradigm shift, right? You know, I think our mayor and I love him, I think he has so much potential for us was was meeting with the Dutch consulate the other day from San Francisco, the consul general that was out here in Denver and was like, Yeah, but when you have kids, you start to you have to drive them everywhere, right?

00:58:13:16 - 00:58:45:15
Allen Cowgill
So I think there is a tremendous opportunity there for us in in the advocacy community to show people like, oh, you don't have to drive them everywhere. There ways, like whether you're looking at cargo bikes or even e-bikes for kids or regular bikes for kids of not necessarily being confined to the car. Right. So I think there's tremendous potential for us to educate folks on what the choices are, but there's also tremendous opportunity for us to really go out there and create that safer infrastructure.

00:58:45:15 - 00:59:03:07
Allen Cowgill
So and I think that's a valid concern of his that like, hey, like as a parent, you don't have a choice because I think for a lot of parents and a lot of places in Denver, he's right. That is not a choice. There is not a cycling infrastructure right now. We're lucky that our neighborhood was one of the first ones to have a build out of community transportation networks.

00:59:03:07 - 00:59:05:23
Allen Cowgill
But we're not there yet for a lot of town right now.

00:59:05:25 - 00:59:35:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, that that is kind of part of why cities in North America and around the globe are are striving to create try to build out a safe and inviting all ages and abilities network because the benefits are just so incredibly powerful. When we look at societies, you know, like the cities throughout the Netherlands, I mentioned Danish, you know, the Copenhagen example in several other, you know, communities around the globe.

00:59:35:15 - 01:00:01:08
John Simmerman
When you look at those societies where kids are able to develop that sense of autonomy and are able to get around and understand their city, it's amazing what that does for them as they become young adults and and beyond. So I think that it yeah, it's kind of scary for us right now as to where we're at. But, you know, again, you don't have to go very far.

01:00:01:08 - 01:00:30:07
John Simmerman
You can you go up the road to Boulder and see, you know, where you know, in certain neighborhoods, you know, in certain schools. It's amazing to see that level of independence that they they, you know, develop and it spills over to not just in bicycles. I love when I when I ride the bus, they're all noticed that, you know, all sorts of middle schoolers are like using the skip in the hop and, you know, they're getting around town.

01:00:30:10 - 01:00:35:19
John Simmerman
So it's not always walking and biking. They also use transit very frequently too.

01:00:35:22 - 01:00:48:10
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, Yeah. I think the thing that gives me the most hope is that future generation of the potential for them to see what's possible. And, you know, when the Dutch consul general here is pushed back saying, no, no, it's definitely possible.

01:00:48:12 - 01:00:49:02
John Simmerman
To.

01:00:49:03 - 01:00:59:16
Allen Cowgill
Have your kids go out on their own and but you have to have the infrastructure there and the opportunities for them to do so to to feel comfortable as a parent. Yeah.

01:00:59:18 - 01:01:22:20
John Simmerman
And I'm glad I was wonderfully I was very, very heartened to see that the Dutch consul general was there. And we've had the opportunity to have a long term partnership with the Dutch government and the Dutch Cycling Embassy here in Austin, Texas. And so I literally call the network that we're building here a Dutch inspired network for that reason.

01:01:22:20 - 01:01:49:16
John Simmerman
Because of that, you know, decades long relationship and the amount of work that has been gone been put in, invested in to try to create that safe and inviting network. It's a lot of work, though, and you can only do so much protect IT infrastructure. It's very, very costly to do it very very well. Yeah you can do the lighter, quicker, cheaper, but at some point in time you need to put in permanent infrastructure.

01:01:49:22 - 01:02:10:04
John Simmerman
But most importantly, what we have to do is slow motor vehicle speeds down. Most importantly, we need to bring the motor vehicle volumes down and we have to start kind of caving into, you know, those those VMT counts as motor vehicle, you know, travel counts through areas and saying, well, we have to prioritize the movement of motor vehicles.

01:02:10:07 - 01:02:20:10
John Simmerman
We can't possibly take a lane away. You know, it's like you take getting rid of that, you know, mindset of level of service, you know, for motor vehicles.

01:02:20:13 - 01:02:44:07
Allen Cowgill
Yeah. One thing that brings me hope again, I feel like I'm a Denver Streets partnership fanboy right now. But Jill and Molly there let our 20/20 plenty campaign and a few years ago had our you know our neighborhood street speed limit reduced from 25 to 20 which I think that's going to help. But you know, our most dangerous streets right now are not our neighborhood streets.

01:02:44:07 - 01:03:03:00
Allen Cowgill
We think about Vision Zero here in Denver. People are consistently getting seriously injured or killed on our arterial streets. A lot of those are CDOT roads. One thing that gives me hope is I've just heard that they're going to be putting a chicane on federal Boulevard. U.S. 285 through our neighborhood here in Cairo, the slums like Jefferson Park area.

01:03:03:02 - 01:03:12:00
Allen Cowgill
And that's really exciting. The other thing I've heard recently is that CDOT is now saying that they're no longer going to use the I think it's the 85th percentile rule.

01:03:12:02 - 01:03:12:21
John Simmerman
Right.

01:03:12:23 - 01:03:30:26
Allen Cowgill
When setting speed limits. And that gives me so much hope. In the past, I've had heard conversations of state traffic engineers for our state roads that go through our neighborhood. When you request the speed limit to be lowered, I've heard conversations around, well, they did a speed study and they're like, well, drivers are actually going faster. We're going to raise the speed limit.

01:03:31:01 - 01:03:52:07
Allen Cowgill
Right? So it's giving me hope that we have now starting to throw the 85th percentile out because it's such an antiquated way of looking at safety. Yeah, we have a really long way to go with a lot of our traffic engineers is kind of bringing them up to a more modern look at safety as opposed to VMT and, you know, throughput of of moving cars quickly.

01:03:52:07 - 01:03:59:18
Allen Cowgill
But I do have some hope that we are starting to kind of chisel around the edges of that, are going to see some things come.

01:03:59:21 - 01:04:28:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, I'm hopeful too, and I will keep my fingers crossed because, yes, your biggest challenge, our biggest challenge, you know, I think universally across most of most of North America are some of those busier streets that are state owned. And so having a D.O.T. that's sort of on board with this concept that it's not about moving number of motor vehicles, it's about creating safe environments.

01:04:28:21 - 01:05:07:29
John Simmerman
And in fact, if you truly make it a safe and inviting environment for all modes, you will suddenly be able to move for a far greater number of people because a really well-designed, protected bike infrastructure, bike lane can actually carry ten times the number of people that motor vehicle travel lanes can carry just with single occupancy vehicles really, you know, sort of com giving very, very solid competition to a well run street streetcar line or tram.

01:05:07:29 - 01:05:33:18
John Simmerman
So it's, you know, good stuff. And I'm very, very stoked to see the progress that Denver is making and I really applaud all of you you this whole band of of engaged citizenry there in the Denver area. You guys are rock stars keep up the great work and all. And it's been such a wonderful joy and pleasure having you on the Active Towns podcast.

01:05:33:23 - 01:05:53:22
Allen Cowgill
Yeah, John, thanks for having me. And we're really lucky here. It's it's definitely a village effort from everybody from the Denver Streets partnership to pedestrian dignity and bicycle Colorado Denver bicycle lobby. We are really lucky to have such a active community of engaged folks here, and I think there's potential for so much more to come. So, yeah, thanks for having me on.

01:05:53:22 - 01:05:54:13
Allen Cowgill
Appreciate.

01:05:54:15 - 01:06:11:08
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Alan, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the Active Towns Channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

01:06:11:15 - 01:06:32:16
John Simmerman
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01:06:32:19 - 01:06:59:06
John Simmerman
Again, thank you so much for tuning in. It really means so much to me. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super. Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

01:06:59:08 - 01:07:00:15
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.