So anyone in Denver: remember when that Trader Joe’s opened on Colorado Blvd? People were losing thier minds, “Not enough parking!” “What were they thinking?”
Well guess what? It’s working fine. Turns out TJ maybe knew more about thier customer base than car brains (like myself) thought
That is TJ’s persistent M.O. Every single TJ I can think of has way too small of a parking lot. I don’t know if it is a marketing ploy to look super busy and therefor more desirable, or maybe an ethical choice to move away from car culture.
Either way, I almost never shop at any TJ since parking sucks. I would love to be able to walk to a grocery store, but I can’t in my city outside of one that doesn’t sell any of the food I want to buy.
How far is your closest grocery store that you go to?
The closest store I go to is 1.1 miles from my house. Not super far, but it’s on a busy road with long lights at intersections. So walking 25 minutes there, shopping, and walking 25 minutes back with bags of food is not really enjoyable. This is especially true in LA summer heat with frozen goods. The grocery store I don’t walk to is 1/2 mile away and is good for fresh produce but not good for packaged/prepared/luxury goods (nice coffee, better cooking ingredients, good yogurt). I go there if I need something fast for cooking.
And this is in a relatively walkable area of LA. When I lived in downtown LA, the closest grocery store was 3 miles away in a very dangerous neighborhood.
Honestly neither of them are that far… you could bike over and back with the bags on your handlebars even if it is a busy road. And a 2 mile or 1 mile walk is also not that much to do… it takes some time yeah but also good for you in general to get those steps in.
This is good news, but I really hope that city streets become walkable and transit becomes primary.
Hopefully it does not mean that the streets become wider as a result or more cars end up parked at street level.
Cool. How walkable and transit-able is Denver?
Currently? Not at all.
Oh no
well, there is transit in denver. rtd has a typical (for the u.s.) bus service, along with 10 rail lines (mix of heavy and light rail), serving over 60m passenger rides a year. however, many parts of the city have little or no service at all.
Yeah, nearest light rail station is 2 miles away from me and I live in the city. I can ride my bike around town for the most part, beating people driving if we start at the same start and going to the same destination. I do ride mostly in late spring -early fall. Snow and ice make it hard for my gravel bike to get around. But getting from the south side of town to the north side kind of is a bear riding. Lot of bus stops in my area though……
I have a remote job and considered moving there. I ultimately decided not to because of the cost of living and the low walkability of the city.
You must live in a very walkable city then. I find Denver to be excellent but I spent a lot of time in Ohio before Denver and those cities suck for walkablity and bike ability
I live in a city where I can afford to actually live in a very walkable part.
Lite Rail is finally making it down Colfax! Lol we need to shout down all the NIMBYs. We need housing and transit yesterday. But money prevents human development at this point.
That construction right now on East Colfax is for a center bus lane. It’s got a name but I can’t remember what they call that style of bus route.
Not light rail, because light rail makes sense there. Denver doesn’t do stuff that makes sense.
Oh lol fucking he’ll
One bright spot is that if RTD already owns the right of way it’s easier to put rail in at a later date. Might have been that climatetown YouTuber who clued me into that factoid, if not him someone in that circle
Some parts near downtown and a few hipster areas are walkable. The rest of the city is not at all walkable.
There is some mass transit in Denver that works pretty well for specific areas. If you are not in those areas then there is very little access to mass transit.
This is where capitalism actually works. If an apartment building is able to save 1m on construction costs because they have less parking they will then have reduced demand from people who own cars so will have to lower price. If the amount that they save on construction causes them to lose money because people value those parking spaces greater than the cost to build them then the construction companies will be forced to build more spaces.
But by first removing the parking minimums it allows housing to be built denser and near transit lines so the city will become more walkable and transit able.
It’s never a bad idea to build transit first but it’s hard to get people to actually use transit when everything is so far apart from eachother that causes people to half to walk 10-20 minutes from the bus stops to their destination
Like others have mentioned it could be better but I moved to the south east recently and these are actually unwalkable cities I had no idea. At least in Denver there’s sidewalks 85% of the time and a regular bus or train available to get some places.
Denver already had a bunch of rules that allows development without parking, this is icing on the cake
