Boulder's Baseline Road gets improvements after dangerous road designation

The City of Boulder is working to make one of its most populated roads safer. According to the city, Baseline Road is one of the top 10 crash locations in the city for people walking and bicycling and is one of three priority corridors on the Core Arterial Network, also known as CAN. 

The CAN is Boulder's connected system of multimodal transportation, which includes taking the bus, driving, biking, and walking. Improvements are needed along Boulder's main corridors that will help reduce the potential for severe crashes and make it more comfortable and convenient for people to get where they need to go.

The city is implementing two phases to fix this issue. The first has already been completed by adding a barrier along Baseline Road and repaving the roads. This is a separated bike lane that will help split up the bicycling community from the driving community. 

Now, the city is working on phase two, which will be used to add more improvements to Baseline Road. For starters, the city is looking to add better crosswalks for bicyclists and walkers while adding floating bus stops to provide safer separation options between bikes and buses. This will stop the buses from using bike lanes to pick up passengers. The City is also working to improve its intersections, signal timing, and visibility.

All of this work is needed as the section of Baseline Road between 28th Street and Foothills Parkway has been identified as a high-risk and high-injury area. The city is also working to reduce speeds in this area from 40 mph to 35 mph. 

"One of the primary goals is to moderate those vehicle speeds and to reduce the risk to the vulnerable road users," Daniel Sheeter, Principal Transportation Planner for the City of Boulder said. "Those are people that are walking and biking. The phase one project included the separated bike lanes, protected lanes, and striping changes. We have seen a modest reduction in speed already as we are more comprehensively complete. Those improvements would further reduce speed and reduce the risk."

The city tells CBS Colorado that phase one and phase two cost a little under $5 million. Four million comes from awarded grants from the Denver Regional Council of Governments. Phase two is currently in the design stage and is set to go until 2025. Construction is anticipated to start between 2025 and 2026.

Residents can check out the Baseline Road Transportation Improvement Project here.