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WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 5, 2024
VOLUME 97 | ISSUE 40
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New app yields low-stress bike routes
Road to top of Mount Blue Sky closed until 2026 Uppermost section of Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway will not reopen until Memorial Day 2026 BY CHRIS KOEBERL CKOEBERL@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
app was launched where users can plug destinations into a map that yields “low-stress” routes around the city. Rather than taking Stopper down East Florida Avenue, the Bike Streets app directs him down Josephine and then Iowa. Blue lines on the app indicate quieter streets, broken up occasionally by red lines for major intersections where users may want to hop off their bikes and walk. “The idea behind Bike Streets is that we can as a community become organized to ride the same streets and make it possible for even more people to ride bikes wherever they want to,” Stopper said. “Nothing is worse than sitting in traffic and nothing is better than being active, outside and seeing different neighborhoods.”
The highest paved road in North America, Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway, closed Sept. 3 to all travel to the peak including motorized, biking and most hiking as road repairs continue until Memorial Day 2026, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The byway, also known as CO Hwy 5, closed from the Forest Service gate near Highway 103 in Clear Creek County through the project area, above Summit Lake, USFS representatives said. USFS plans to repair the damaged roadway from the Summit Lake overflow parking lot to the first switchback past Summit Lake. Danille Perrone from Toronto, Canada stood at the peak of Mount Blue Sky with friends on Aug. 23 in 40-degree temperatures with a cold wind blowing strong across the peak as she gazed at the view from 14,264 feet with Summit Lake below. “It’s raw and fresh, it’s God’s country,” Perrone said. The USFS said its goal is to “improve public safety while reducing ongoing impacts to the fragile alpine ecosystem and restore the natural hydraulic processes through the area.”
SEE ROUTES, P4
SEE CLOSED, P8
The city of Denver has worked to create more biking infrastructure, with a plan to add more than 230 miles of new bike lanes. PHOTO BY MERYL PHAIR
The community-led project works to fill gaps in the city’s evolving cycling infrastructure BY MERYL PHAIR SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
Washington Park’s East Florida Avenue is marked by “sharrows,” white bikes accompanied by two arrow lines painted on the pavement along routes shared by motorists and cyclists. While these routes might be a breeze for an experienced two-wheel commuter, for someone new to biking, using the mode of transportation to meet a friend or a kid biking to nearby Merrill Middle School, navigating
cars on shared bike routes can be a stressful and unsafe experience. “There are studies that have been done where getting passed by a car raises your blood pressure,” said Avi Stopper as he crossed the street on his bike. As if on cue, a Rivian whizzed by. Continuing down the street, Stopper said there is a significant population of people in the Denver area who would utilize cycling as a mode of transportation if they weren’t deterred by speeding cars and buses. To reach those folks, the founder of Bike Streets has led the charge on establishing a 500-mile Low-Stress Denver Bike Map that has been used a million times since 2018. Relying on a network of 45 “neighborhood captains” these cycling enthusiasts use local knowledge of neighborhoods to build out a network of quiet streets. This June, a Bike Streets
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