Tonight is the last night for Denver’s 15th Street bridge over I-25, as we know it. Starting overnight, its demolition will begin, assuming CDOT sticks to its schedule.
There are only three bridges over I-25 in central Denver that are original to the highway’s construction in the 50s/60s: the 15th Street bridge, the W. 23rd Avenue bridge, and the Speer Boulevard bridge. All three are showing their age, substantially. CDOT assures us they are all still safe, and I don’t doubt that they are at the moment, but their replacement in the short-term is inevitable. The replacement of these 50+-year-old bridges represent the type of infrastructure investments we need to be making in Denver and throughout Colorado and the country.
The original 15th Street bridge was designed during an era when only motor vehicles mattered. Pedestrians were barely an afterthought and, in the case of the 15th Street bridge, they were offered only a narrow 5-foot-wide sidewalk; an unpleasant and uneven passage in a harsh environment for sure. The new 15th Street bridge will be somewhat better. The sidewalks on both sides will be 10-feet wide, with attractive iron fencing (same as what’s on 20th and 23rd) separating the pedestrian from the busy highway below. On the bridge’s non-pedestrian surface, there will be four lanes striped for motor vehicles, two in each direction, with the right-hand lane in both directions marked with sharrows to support a slightly more bicycle-friendly environment. I’ll have more to say about the bicycle issues on 15th in a future post.
The rebuilding of the 15th Street bridge is part of a bigger project to increase southbound I-25’s efficiency. The new 15th Street bridge will have a much wider span across the highway, thereby allowing CDOT to remove a pinch-point in the traffic flow of southbound I-25 between 20th Street and Speer Boulevard by adding auxiliary lanes that will eliminate the conflict between exiting and merging traffic.
Meanwhile, Denver was planning a major project called the Central Street Promenade, which would add a 10-foot-wide concrete ped/bike path along the highway-side of Central Street between 16th and 20th. Fortunately, CDOT and Denver agreed to merge/expand their projects, and so now we’re getting it all: a rebuilt 15th Street bridge, a wider/more efficient Interstate 25, and a new Central Street Promenade from 15th to 20th. For more details, check out my original post on this project here.
How about a few photos of the 15th Street bridge for posterity’s sake?
This “I-25 expansion/15th street bridge reconstruction/Central Street Promenade” project should be finished by late 2013/early 2014.
No bike lanes huh? Fail.
Check out 16th St., chief.
There’s no need for your patronizing tone, CN. 16th St. is great for recreational bike riding while 15th St. is used by many cyclists, myself included, for transportation between downtown and all points north. Not putting bike lanes on the bridge now while it’s being rebuilt is terribly short-sighted given the city’s growing number of bicycle commuters as well as it’s stated commitment to increasing bicycle’s transportation share. I can only hope that the new bridge will be wide enough to accommodate bike lanes in the future.
I was merely mirroring the concision/condescension of your original post, Justin. 15th St. is not a designated bike corridor, while 16th (along with its Tejon St. feeder) is. Here’s that map:
http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/708/documents/Bicycle%20News/BikeMap1.pdf
Also, the grade of 15th makes it a somewhat perilous bike route, given heavy use by buses and other traffic. Personally, I wouldn’t use it when there’s a nice alternative one block away. The wider sidewalk may be an option for those who do, however, provided the city chooses to designate it as bike-able (as is the case on other parts of 15th St.).
The city will be putting in a bufferred bike lane or traffic protected cycle track on 15th st through lodo. It is incredibly shortsighted to not continue this across I25. 16th St does not connect easily to the cherry creek bike path and the rest of our bike network. Anybody who has seen all the bikes locked up on platte st on a friday night would understand how investing in bike infrastructure could alleviate traffic and parking issues in the area, especially in the booming lower highlands.
CDOT has dropped the ball on a number of significant bridge projects recently- Alameda at Santa Fe (an important connection to the platte river trail), First Ave at Downing (a designated bike route and connection to the cherry creek trail) and now 15th St. Somebody should get hickenlooper on the phone and remind him of his commitment to bike commuting in denver.
Any chance there is a rendering or drawing of what the Central Street Promenade will look like? I live on that street so I am really curious to know.
Not really. I’ve seen some construction drawings, but that’s it. There’s not much to it: there will be a wide sidewalk along the highway-side of Central from 15th to 20th between the curb and the new retaining wall that will be topped with fencing, new streetlights, bulb-outs at the intersection crosswalks, and a new three-way stop at 18th & Central.