CDOT Awards Grants Statewide to Help Communities Manage Congestion and Reduce Emissions

Transportation demand management grants will fund planning efforts, car-share programs, micro-mobility and other initiatives

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is awarding $492,000 in grants to communities and organizations around the state to help relieve traffic congestion and lower greenhouse gas emissions from driving through “transportation demand management.”

“At CDOT, we’ve known for a long time that we can’t simply build our way out of congestion, and we’re proud to help these pioneering communities and organizations give people more options for traveling,” said CDOT Executive Director Shoshana Lew. “Transportation demand management strategies can help manage congestion, restore air quality, and reduce emissions. They can also make communities more thriving and sustainable.”

Transportation demand management, increasingly being adopted by cities and states, is the use of strategies to provide travelers with more travel choices than simply single-vehicle occupancy driving. These choices can include mode, route and time of travel, and work location. Providing these choices doesn’t just reduce congestion and emissions; it increases trip reliability.

Common transportation demand management strategies focus on transit, micromobility such as bikes and scooters, improvements to pedestrian infrastructure, smart growth policies, intelligent transportation systems, managed lanes, and the encouragement of e-work options. These approaches are used most often in large urban areas, but many smaller communities can benefit from them, and CDOT’s grant program will help them do it.

“There are organizations in the metro area that have been doing great work on these strategies for many years, ” said Kay Kelly, chief of innovative mobility for CDOT. “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.”

The projects receiving grants include:

• A program through Colorado CarShare that provides electric vehicle car-sharing for under-resourced communities. The $50,000 grant from CDOT will allow the program to expand from its existing location in Denver into other communities in the metro area, such as Louisville and Lafayette.
• An effort at Colorado State University-Fort Collins to develop a transportation demand management plan for CSU that works for employees and students and to conduct outreach to other higher education institutions around the state about their process and lessons learned. The $50,000 will fund the plan’s creation.
• The Summit County Trailhead Shuttle: the expansion of a pilot program initially launched for Quandary Peak and McCullough Gulch. The $50,000 grant will help fund an expansion of the daily shuttle service to highly trafficked trailheads in Summit County while reducing congestion on CO 9.
• Commuting Solutions, a $50,000 grant to the Louisville-based organization to conduct an analysis of local governments’ existing parking and land use policies and to create a toolkit for best practices for local land use policy and development review. The organization would be partnering with Boulder County, the City of Louisville, the City of Lafayette, the City of Longmont, the Town of Superior, and the Town of Erie.
• The City of Aspen, a $50,000 grant for the expansion of an existing micro-transit service program — including new, door-to-hub, and virtual bus stop models — and the launch of additional bike share stations that facilitate e-bike sharing.
• The City of Castle Pines, a $47,000 grant to the city for evaluation, outreach, and planning to identify strategies to connect Castle Pines commuters to existing RTD services — and specifically the park-and-ride as a transit access hub.
• Colorado Forum, a $50,000 grant to market and promote a “Driving Change Guidebook” developed to provide employers with best practices for green mobility options, along with incorporating employer challenges, reward and recognition efforts, and documentation of progress.
• The City of Fort Collins, $81,000 for a pilot program aimed at City of Fort Collins 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, 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).