Bike lanes and sidewalks a struggle to find for most following latest snowstorm
A new round of snow was falling in Colorado Friday night, following a big storm in the metro area Tuesday and Wednesday. In some places, the snow had yet to be completely cleared.
"You know, I think there's a lot of growing pains for this kind of things," said Rob Toftness, who is a part of the Denver Bike Lobby.
Bike lanes in the city are largely cleared, but there are exceptions. Some lanes had become dumping grounds for snow.
"It's always kind of a struggle because someone will clear something and it will be great and someone else will come along and use that as storage, so there's a back and forth that we need to figure out," Toftness said. "When it thaws and then re-freezes, you get these sort of really bad ice rinks. And those are the sketchy things... If you want to get more adoption of it, you really have to make it comfortable for people that are worried about it," he said, discussing the clearing of the bike lanes.
In unincorporated Jefferson County, some sidewalks in Ken-Caryl were not yet cleared from the mid-week storm, forcing school children to make their way through the snow or route to the streets.
"Probably four or five out of ten houses might be shoveled," said Caleb, an eighth grader at Falcon Bluffs Middle School.
With the sidewalks covered in snow and ice, the children just simply want a pathway where they can safely walk and avoid incoming vehicles.
"It would be nice to walk on the real sidewalk and not have to avoid cars when we're walking on the street," said Brighid, Caleb's friend.
"It's been almost a month since we've been able to do it. And actually, walk on the sidewalk," said Tamera Walters, a mom of four children.
Two of the kids, Cara and Oliver, attend school and Pre-K at Coronado Elementary. Two young children are in a stroller as they walk to school together.
"So, we take the stroller out and we walk point eight miles there, drop them off and walk the point eight miles back," she said.
But South Carr Street is busy and many sections are not shoveled.
In unincorporated Jefferson County, there is no law requiring people to shovel walks, only a suggestion from the county that residents do so.
"Understandably, a lot of the people who don't do it, it's on the back of their house. So, I don't even know if they realize that it's their property," Walters said.
She talked to the school district as well as the county government and even a local homeowners association which has no enforcement mechanism, but things haven't improved.
She worries about her children and others along the stretch.
"It's a busy street and there's only a sidewalk on one side. And there's no shoulder," she said.