The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is awarding $492,000 in grants to help communities around the state relieve traffic congestion and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The grants will support projects focused on transportation demand management, which is the use of strategies to provide travelers with more travel choices than simply single-vehicle occupancy driving. According to CDOT, the goal of providing these choices is to reduce congestion and emissions as well as increase trip reliability.
“There are organizations in the metro area that have been doing great work on these strategies for many years,” Kay Kelly, chief of innovative mobility for CDOT, said in a statement. “We’re excited to see these grants help existing groups scale up successful projects and to be encouraging innovation and expansion of transportation demand management efforts to new audiences statewide.”
Common transportation demand management strategies focus on transit, micro-mobility such as bikes and scooters, improvements to pedestrian infrastructure, smart growth policies, intelligent transportation systems, managed lanes, and the encouragement of e-work options.
A few of the projects receiving grants include:
- The Summit County Trailhead Shuttle will receive a $50,000 grant to help fund an expansion of the daily shuttle service to highly trafficked trailheads in Summit County while reducing congestion on CO 9.
- The City of Aspen will receive a $50,000 grant for the expansion of an existing micro-transit service program and the launch of additional bike-share stations that facilitate e-bike sharing.
- The City of Fort Collins will receive a $81,000 for a pilot program aimed at city employees and low-income residents that would provide free access to micro-mobility through Spin in combination with an eight-month program of education, equipment support, and outreach that builds upon the city’s wider “Shift Your Ride Travel Options” transportation demand management program.
- The City of Glenwood Springs will receive a $64,000 grant to create a transportation management association for Glenwood Springs that will develop transportation demand management strategies recommended by the city’s 2021 Multimodal Options for a Vibrant Economy (MOVE) study, completed alongside the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority (RFTA).
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SOURCE: Colorado Department of Transportation
