North Denver Safer Streets (NDSS)

• Monday, February 24, 2025
• 2:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
• Birdseed Collective weekly food box distribution
• Globeville Community Center
• 4496 Grant Street, Denver, CO 80216

• Thursday, February 27, 2025
• 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
• GES CAG Meeting
• Virtual Meeting on Zoom: Register Here

The project team provided an update on the project to the Globeville Elyria Swansea Community Action Group (CAG) at a virtual meeting on January 29, 2025. 

 Click below to watch the virtual meeting and hear which projects the team has identified as priority investments and how community members can get involved in the project. The NDSS presentation begins at timestamp 1:10:32.

• Meeting Recording (YouTube)

The project team provided an overview of the project to the Globeville Elyria Swansea Community Action Group (CAG) at a virtual meeting on October 24, 2024.

Click below to watch the virtual meeting and learn more about the team's approach and goals. The NDSS presentation begins at timestamp 11:09.

• Meeting Recording (YouTube)

Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) is responsible for all public improvements in the City — including everything from streets to sewers, sidewalks to traffic lights.

DOTI is leading a new effort called North Denver Safer Streets (NDSS), which will build improvements along priority streets to make them safer and more accessible for everyone in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods. DOTI will use a community driven process that co-creates solutions and build projects that improve safety and access for people walking, bicycling, scooting, rolling and driving — between now and 2028.

DOTI has heard and understands traveling in GES is challenging — options for getting around are limited, major barriers exist, and travel can be uncomfortable, especially on busier streets or streets with lots of truck traffic. Making travel better in North Denver can help address historical inequities, environmental and public health challenges, and traffic safety concerns. Projects built through NDSS will enhance access, support economic development, improve quality of life, and promote equity by prioritizing safer streets, better public transit, and make cooler streets that also drain water better.

Transportation improvements that the NDSS project will bring to North Denver include slowing speeds, reducing cut-through traffic, adding crosswalks and making crossings safer, providing space for bicyclists/scooter riders, making bus stops accessible, and adding more greenery to our streets.

Some of the project goals include:

• Co-creating and building solutions that address the most pressing travel needs in collaboration with the GES community.
• Building on community feedback in North Denver to address transportation priorities, improve connectivity and find creative solutions to local needs.
• Building smaller improvements that meet the North Denver community's travel needs within three years.
• Starting bigger projects, such as exploring a new bus route, that will be built later.

Projects will be built within the GES neighborhoods, bounded by an area that runs north to south along Inca Street between East 52nd Avenue and Park Avenue and East 54th Avenue to East 40th Avenue, and west to east along I-70 from Inca Street to Colorado Boulevard. NDSS is seeking to focus investments along the streets prioritized by the community in recent years that need changes most (highlighted in blue in the map below) - though we will be collecting feedback about the travel around the entire area, as well as travel in-and-out.

Some of the other DOTI projects that NDSS will tie into include:

• Denver Vision Zero
• Denver Moves Everyone (DME) 2050
• Denver Moves: Safe and Slow Streets with Bikeways
• Washington Area Connectivity and Prioritization Study
• Globeville Neighborhood Transportation Plan

The NDSS project is one of several active DOTI projects in the GES area. The City is doing a lot of construction work in GES and has grouped information about these projects into a bucket called the GES Program of Projects. This will help make it easier to learn about all the city project happening now in the neighborhood, in one place. Projects in this program include:

• 48th Avenue Greenway and Outfall
• 51st Avenue: Logan Street to Emerson Street
• Globeville Levee Improvements
• Carpio-Sanguinette Park and Heron Pond Open Space
• Lincoln/I-70 Underpass Pedestrian Improvements Project
• Pedestrian/GES Sidewalk Improvements
• Washington Street Final Design: 47th Avenue to 52nd Avenue

To learn more about the GES Program of Projects and to view a map, visit bit.ly/gesprojects.

The images below show the types of street safety and access improvements that will be built through NDSS. These changes will be prioritized along specific streets to create a network of routes that make it easier to walk, bike, access transit, and drive across the neighborhoods.

Full Size Image(JPG, 295KB)

NDSS project improvements are being paid for through different funds. These include:

• Capital Improvement Program – Funded via taxes in Denver to improve transportation, these funds will be used to build street safety improvements, pedestrian crosswalks, make bus stops more accessible, and plan transit improvements along 48th Ave.
• Bond Funds – A portion of the 2021 RISE bond – voted on by Denver residents – will be used to build improvements in GES that make streets slower and safer for everyone.
• Federal Grant Funds – The City was awarded Federal Grant Funds – via the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) – will be used to build improvements in GES that make streets slower and safer for everyone.
• Wastewater Enterprise Fund – A fee properties are assessed will be used to build green infrastructure improvements.

The City is combining these funds so that we can rapidly build projects in the community all at one, as well as start bigger projects so that we can move them forward to being built.

North Denver Safer Streets (NDSS) is starting with a map of priority streets, identified by the community through past planning efforts. Using this map, NDSS will first seek feedback about which of these streets – or portions of streets – are most important to make changes to, or if there are any streets not highlighted in the map that represent priorities.

Since we have limited funds – the streets, or street portions, that are identified through community outreach as the most in need of changes will be prioritized for improvements. The types of changes made to streets will vary based upon the diverse street types in the neighborhoods – and will be co-created with the community once the street locations to improve are identified.

DOTI will engage North Denver residents to verify and prioritize the planning and design of improvements through public meetings, neighborhood events, surveys and community conversations.

For questions, email DOTI.GES@denvergov.org or call the project hotline at (720) 865-2806.