"This is really premature at this time to start planning a BRT project on Colorado Boulevard when they don't even know what the impacts are on Colfax to the businesses and the ridership from the BRT." Josh Bertrand, Glendale's deputy city manager, said that in mid-May, standing near a sticky-note-covered map of the corridor that forms Hilltop's entire western edge. His city's council had just voted, unanimously, to oppose every option on the table.
That was four months ago. The Colorado Department of Transportation told residents at the time that it expected to name its locally preferred alternative, the design that determines what actually gets built, by the end of summer. Summer has come and gone. As of the most recent public update on the project, a late-August newsletter from Lowry United Neighborhoods, no decision had been announced. What filled the silence instead was a new grassroots campaign asking CDOT to stop the clock altogether.
If you live anywhere near Colorado Boulevard in Hilltop, that gap between what you were told to expect and what actually happened is the story worth understanding, not the open house recap you may have already read.
What CDOT actually put on the table at Graland
Back in late April, the Hilltop Neighborhood Association hosted CDOT at Graland Country Day School to walk residents through the three configurations still under consideration for the 7-mile corridor between 40th Avenue and Hampden Avenue. The presentation opened with the number driving the whole project: CDOT's planning documents project the population along the corridor will grow 52 percent by 2050, on a road that already carries close to 3,000 daily bus riders and sits on the city's High Injury Network, with 117 crashes resulting in death or serious injury between 2018 and 2022.
Here is what separates the three options CDOT is still weighing, based on the figures the agency presented:
| Alternative | How it works | Transit time vs. today | Effect on car traffic | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mixed Flow | Buses share existing lanes with regular traffic | Up to 25% faster | About 5% longer trips for drivers | $200 to $250 million |
| Side-Running | Dedicated curb-side bus lanes, two through lanes remain for cars | Up to 30% faster | Up to 1.4 times longer trips for drivers | Not yet published |
| Center-and-Side Hybrid | Center-running lanes north of Alameda Avenue, side-running lanes south of it | Comparable to Side-Running | CDOT's own analysis flags this as carrying the heaviest construction impact and cost | Higher than Mixed Flow, per CDOT's comparison |
CDOT has also said the project would cut the corridor's 50 existing stops down to 20, part of how it expects to raise average bus speeds by 20 to 30 percent regardless of which lane configuration wins. Mixed Flow, notably, is the option with what CDOT itself describes as good agency support, which tracks with why Glendale's council recommended it in an eight-page letter the previous spring, a letter council members say CDOT never formally answered.
Why the summer deadline quietly disappeared
Part of the answer is Glendale, whose one-mile stretch of the corridor runs between Mississippi and Alameda avenues and includes some of the highest-profile businesses on the boulevard. The city's opposition isn't just political. Its own traffic counts show vehicle volumes on Colorado Boulevard have declined at every measured intersection over the past 20 years, a data point Glendale has used to question whether CDOT's growth projections justify the disruption at all. Because Colorado Boulevard is a state highway, CDOT has the legal authority to move forward without Glendale's sign-off. Authority and consensus are different things, and consensus is what a project this size needs to survive its own construction phase.
The other part of the answer is timing. The reason "wait and see" carries real weight right now, rather than just being a stalling tactic, is that there isn't yet anything to see. East Colfax Avenue, Denver's only other BRT corridor currently under construction, is not scheduled to reopen its center bus-only lanes between Broadway and Colorado Boulevard until this fall, and full Bus Rapid Transit service on that corridor isn't expected until 2027. The before-and-after data that would tell CDOT whether dedicated lanes actually change ridership, actually help businesses, or actually reduce crashes on a comparable Denver street simply doesn't exist yet. Advocates on the other side argue the corridor can't afford to wait.
"Our transportation system up to now has been through moving personal vehicles, but the research is in. That doesn't work. It's not safe."
That's Adrienne Zavi of the Denver Streets Partnership, at the same May open house where Bertrand spoke, making the case that inaction has its own cost, measured in the 140 pedestrian fatalities the city recorded between 2020 and 2025.
The pause campaign nobody was watching for
What actually moved the story forward this summer wasn't a CDOT announcement. It was a new organizing effort called Save Colorado Boulevard, led by a resident named Woody Garnsey, who presented the idea to the Lowry United Neighborhoods board at its August meeting. The ask is specific: pause any further Colorado Boulevard planning for two years after East Colfax's BRT is fully operational, so the city can evaluate the actual results of the corridor it's already built before committing to the next one.
Lowry United Neighborhoods published that request on August 31 and is now polling its own residents on where they stand. Whether Hilltop's own neighborhood association takes a formal position remains to be seen, but the pattern is clear: the closer this project gets to a real decision, the more organized the opposition to making one quickly becomes. That is likely the real reason CDOT's summer timeline slipped without an announcement either way.
What this means if your street touches Colorado Boulevard right now
Nothing about your daily commute changes this year. Construction on any Colorado Boulevard alternative isn't expected before 2030, and CDOT itself has said that timeline could move further depending on which option gets chosen and when. What has already changed is smaller, but it shows up on your bill twice a year: the citywide Sidewalk Implementation Plan fee, a flat $150 annual charge for most Hilltop property owners, with an additional $3.50 per linear foot for anyone with more than 230 feet of street frontage. That program is separate from the BRT decision, funding a nine-year buildout of Denver's sidewalk network broadly, but it's worth understanding because CDOT has pointed to Colorado Boulevard's own sidewalk gaps, about a mile of missing sidewalk and four miles that fall short of ADA standards, as one of the problems any BRT alternative is meant to fix.
If you want your preferences on record before CDOT names a preferred alternative, the neighborhood association's community survey is still open, and the state's own comment channels remain active on the project's public page. A few things worth doing before the next public meeting, whenever it lands:
- Check whether your property's frontage puts you over the 230-foot threshold on the sidewalk fee, since the calculation is available through the city's own online tool.
- Review the three alternatives yourself rather than relying on secondhand summaries, since the tradeoffs between Mixed Flow and the two dedicated-lane options are genuinely different depending on whether you drive or ride the 40 bus regularly.
- Watch for whether Save Colorado Boulevard gains traction with other neighborhood associations along the corridor, since that's the variable most likely to actually change CDOT's timeline again.
The version of this story you'll find elsewhere treats the May open house as the news. The more accurate read is that the open house was the beginning of a stalemate, not the end of one, and the stalemate is what's actually shaping the next year on Hilltop's western border.
If you're weighing what any of this, from the boulevard's long-term future to the sidewalk fee already on your bill, might mean for your own property near Colorado Boulevard, the team at The Hoffman Group knows this stretch of Hilltop well and is glad to talk through it. And if you're simply curious what your home is worth in today's market, our Get Your Free Home Valuation tool is always open, no pressure, no obligation.
