CDOT study identifies stretch of Colfax Avenue in Denver as top crash hotspot
The foot traffic at Colfax Avenue and Moline Street in Denver is near constant in steady competition with those driving through the area.
"It's always crazy, it's always hectic here. It's always fast paced," Tony Guzma said after crossing Colfax Avenue.
The walkers and the drivers make for a dangerous combination resulting in crash after crash.
"They took the whole bus stop out twice," Katherine Wollfolk said about what she had seen at the intersection.
One of those, on Jan. 24, left two people pinned inside one of those bus stops. The very next week a 15-year-old was hit and killed crossing the street in the same area.
"The 'Fax is wild, it's just wild," said Demetrius Buckingham, who lives in the area.
According to a new study from the Colorado Department of Transportation looking at bike and pedestrian safety, the section of roadway from Colfax Avenue and Moline Street to Colfax Avenue and Peoria Street topped the list of crash hotspots in the Denver metro area.
"You could get hit just standing right here and someone's driving reckless," Buckingham said.
The CDOT report found several of the crashes happened when pedestrians were crossing mid roadway.
They have identified several safety improvements that could help, including increased lighting and additional crosswalks to shortening the crossing distance from one side of Colfax Avenue to the other with raised medians.
Some of the fixes are already in the works, like adding more of a landscape buffer between the roadway and sidewalk.
For those who live and work in the area, they are changes that can't come soon enough.
"You just stand in the middle and hope not to get hit," Guzma said.
|View the report from the Colorado Department of Transportation|
