BSC2009 – Boulder Transportation – Will Toor

Traditional road-building focus until 1990
Fiscal, political and physical reality intervened
Goal – Hold Traffic to 1994 levels, reduce SOV mode share to 25%
Why not just build more roads?
If Boulder pursued a road capacity building project:
- $200 million on road capacity projects
- improve system congestion from 60% in 20 years to 51% congested
- would require removing existing buildings in many cases
- evidence shows that the benefits are offset by changed behaviors.
Vehicle Technology
- greatest short term potential in higher fuel economy – lower emission vehicle
- biofuels not a definite benefit
- plug in hybrids (PHEV) beneficial if on a clean energy grid
- technology alone will not be enough
  - Land use transportation connection with compact development
  - shifting investments from conventional to transit and bicycle transportation.
Smart Grid City
- Monitoring and remote information of all uses of energy in the grid
- Renewable energy
- programmable in-home systems to fully automate renewable energy use. (XCEL Energy)
- PHEV capacity in a pilot project with Vehicle to Grid battery storage (V2G)
- Beginning to see homeowners oversizing solar system anticipating PHEV availability.
Compact Land Use
- Urban growth boundary surrounded by publicly owned open space.
Travel Choices
- Transit Services
  - Designed to meet the needs of the customer
  - high frequency
  - supported by pass programs – lots of options.
  - extended hours of service
  - community characters
  - real time arrival information
  - focus on ridership, not coverage.
- Create Demand for Transit
- Bike System
- Pedestrian System
- Marketing and information
- Land Use/Urban Design
- Parking Pricing
- Partnership with University of Colorado
- But with very limited funds.
- Resarch shows that VMT reductions nationwide could be as much as 30% by 2050 – without any other inputs for change.