January 9, 2025 | Chandler Sanchez, Transportation Research Fellow
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Earlier this week I attended the Commuting Solutions Annual Legislative Breakfast, a convening of local government, business, and advocacy stakeholders working to better connect communities across the Northwest Denver metropolitan area. It was refreshing to hear Governor Jared Polis, who spoke at the event, reaffirm that efficient, affordable, safe transportation options are a core priority for Coloradans today. And it’s exciting to see that lawmakers are getting started on that work, introducing Senate Bill 25-30 this week, on the first day of the 2025 legislative session. Sponsored by state Senators Faith Winter and Nick Hinrichsen, as well as Representatives Meg Froelich and Mandy Lindsay, the proposed legislation aims to expand transportation options and reduce car-dependent travel in densely populated communities across the state.
Getting around is harder than It needs to be
As I fulfill a year of service with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP) as a Civic Spark Americorps Fellow, I’ve been thinking about the ways in which traveling by a personal vehicle can feel like the only available mode of transportation in Colorado. As a longtime resident of the Denver Metro area, as our population and economy continue to grow, I believe it’s time to grow beyond our historic car-dependent approach to development.
Getting around is a non-negotiable part of life for every Coloradan, but the job is harder than it needs to be. Many problems stem from our society’s over-dependence on driving. Consider:
- Driving is expensive. A typical family in the Denver Metro area owns two cars and spends more than $14,000 a year on fuel and vehicle costs, even with gas at $3 per gallon. For most families, transportation is the second largest expense after housing.
- Driving is polluting. Vehicle tailpipes are Colorado’s leading source of pollution that is driving up global temperatures and destabilizing our climate. Transportation is also a major reason why significant parts of the Front Range have unhealthy air quality.
- Driving can be hazardous. In 2023 more than 47,000 people ended up in Colorado emergency rooms for injuries related to motor vehicle traffic. That’s almost one out of every 100 residents. 765 people died.
- Driving is time-consuming. The average adult in the Denver Metro area spends almost two hours every day traveling (across all modes). When drivers are on the road, they can’t pursue other priorities, whether that might be work or exercise, playing with kids, or relaxing with a book or TV show. With roughly a million more people expected in Colorado in the coming decades, traffic could place even more pressure on our available time – unless we think differently about building our cities and mobility systems.
We can do better. In November 2024, Governor Polis articulated a vision for improving Colorado’s transportation system over the next decade, where more Coloradans have affordable places to live and can meet their daily needs closer to home. Moving toward this future will help Coloradans save money, clean up our air, protect our climate, make traveling safer, and give us back more of our time. Matt Frommer’s report from last November covers the plan and its benefits in more detail.)
One of the core elements of Colorado’s new 2035 Transportation Vision is to nearly double the share of trips taken by walking, public transportation, or biking by 2035. This initiative comes at a time when Colorado and the rest of the United States continue to grapple with the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on transportation. In the months immediately following the onset of the pandemic, total driving decreased by 25%, though it has since bounced back to 2019 levels. Meanwhile, the share of Coloradans working from home doubled to 20%, a number that has remained relatively stable in recent years. The rise of telework has taken a bite out of every other mode of transportation, including biking, walking, transit, driving alone, and carpooling.
The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) currently estimates that non-driving modes account for just 9.6% of all trips. That number is slightly higher, at 11.6%, for the Denver metro region, where we have higher-quality transit and more walkable communities. To reach the Governor’s vision, we’d have to boost the statewide non-driving mode share to just over 19% in 10 years.
Just how realistic is that goal? To help answer that question, I conducted a survey of goals set by other states and local governments and looked at a few places that have achieved progress to see how Colorado’s vision compares.
Comparing Colorado with other states and regions: Non-driving mode share
While national statistics about travel in general (all trips, not just commuting) are not readily available, we can look to census commute data and compare the transportation mode share for commuting trips to get a sense of how people get around. The share of non-driving trips (transit, biking, and walking) tends to be higher for all trips, which range anywhere from commuting to shopping to social events, since people are more likely to walk and bike around their neighborhoods to parks, shops, and other local amenities. Therefore, non-driving mode share for all trips tends to be about double that of just commute trips.
This holds true for Colorado, where the non-driving commute mode share is 5.2%, which is below the national average (6.0%) and puts the state 16th nationally in terms of the fraction of people that travel to work without using a car. That share is higher for Denver at around 9% in 2023, but we still lag behind other peer cities when it comes to alternative modes of commuting.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau American Communities Survey 2023, 1-year data
Let’s imagine what Colorado might look like if we achieve 19.2% non-vehicle mode share. That level of non-vehicle travel is where cities like Flagstaff and the Seattle metro area are at currently. (And those are hardly car-free places.) We’d still be far behind transit-rich states like New York or Massachusetts.
If we don’t act, we run the risk of falling even further into the trap of car dependence and the escalating congestion that accompanies it, putting Colorado communities on the same track as highway-centric cities like Los Angeles or Houston.
What other jurisdictions have mode shift targets?
Table 1 compares the 2035 Colorado Transportation Plan mode shift target with other states and cities, for context.
Three other states, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Washington, have set specific multimodal targets to guide statewide transportation spending and prioritize public and active transportation investments. Specifically:
- Massachusetts is working to increase non-driving mode share from 28% in 2015 (already well ahead of Colorado’s vision), to reach 40% in 2030.
- Vermont’s Agency of Transportation is similarly trying to increase non-driving commute mode share to above 40% by 2030 from a 25.6% baseline in 2011.
- Washington state is working to increase biking and walking mode share, specifically, from 12% in 2015 to 30% by 2040.
- Illinois has adopted a more conservative target in the climate action plan, and is working to increase statewide low-carbon mode share to a modest 15% by 2050.
A few other states have adopted other types of multimodal targets, like the State of Utah’s target of ensuring that 70% of its residents are within one-half mile of transit services by 2030.
Local visions for alternative travel
Mode share targets adopted by metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), cities, and regional transit agencies are far more common, including by some municipal groups in Colorado like the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), which committed in their 2040 Metro Vision Plan to reach a 35% non-SOV (single occupancy vehicle) commute share by 2040, up from 25.1% of commuters traveling via non-SOV modes in 2014.
Other municipalities, like the City of Portland, exemplify the success that setting mode share targets can have at facilitating administrative support for creating less vehicle-reliant communities. In the decade since adopting ambitious mode share targets in its 2015 Climate Action Plan, the City has pursued Smart Growth strategies, reformed parking policies, and invested heavily in public transit expansion to shift the people of Portland’s transportation mode of choice. As a result, per capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has continued to decline steadily to nearly 30% below the national average, a feat when compared to Denver, whose per capita VMT is still above the national average despite decreasing year over year.
In California alone local governments have been ambitious in their efforts to reshape their transit systems around multi-mobility, with many cities working to double their share of non-driving travelers in the near future, like San Francisco (80% non-driving modes by 2030), Oakland (75% non-driving modes by 2050), and Sacramento (40% of trips being via transit and active transport by 2045). Los Angeles, a city notorious for its traffic, is aiming to triple its share of non-automobile modes by 2035, from 14% in 2015 to 50% to meet climate and standard of living goals.
Smaller cities, like Minneapolis, envision cutting vehicle travel by one third, nearly doubling public transit use, and steadily increasing the amount of people able to travel to their destinations by walking and biking between 2019 and 2030.
Colorado’s roadmap to expand mode choice
- Set an official mode-share target to help drive investment planning
Setting mode share targets that are aligned with the state’s emission targets and climate priorities is only effective when paired with state and regional investment in multimodal transportation options. While the state has attempted to generate more stable funding for multimodal projects, like SB24-184, which introduces a new fee on rental cars and is expected to generate $50 million annually to fund transit and rail projects, there is still a gap between how the state envisions its transportation future and how the state decides to spend its transportation dollars. A clear example of this mismatch between vision and budget is CDOT’s 2026-37 plan, which currently only allocates 15% of the budget for transit, biking, and walking projects.
Enacting statutory mode share targets with fiscal obligations within CDOT or by the state legislature could be a successful method to ensure that state and local transportation budgets reflect their ambitious multimodal visions for the future. The state legislature’s Transportation Legislation Review Committee advanced a bill this September which, if passed in the 2025 session, would direct CDOT to work with MPOs, transit agencies, and local governments across the state to set mode share targets and create plans for mode shift implementation by summer 2026. If implemented, these local and statewide statutory targets could align spending decisions with mode share targets, fiscally prioritizing multimodal infrastructure investments over expensive highway expansions that reinforce a car-dependent Colorado.
In Minnesota, coordinated local transportation and community groups used the momentum of the Minneapolis and St. Paul’s mode share targets and progressive-controlled state legislature to enact HF-2887 in 2023, an omnibus transportation bill that created a transit-funding sales tax within the Twin Cities and also reformed the state’s gas tax to be indexed to inflation. The new sales tax is expected to raise $450 million per year for Metro Transit in the Twin Cities. Compare that figure to Colorado’s SB24-230, which will raise $60-70 million per year for RTD, an agency that serves nearly double the population of Metro Transit. Since its passing, the Twin Cities’ transit agency, Metro Transit, has seen a nearly 13% increase in ridership. Colorado legislators should use the current momentum to a similar effect to ensure that transit, urban planning efforts, and multimodal improvement projects are fiscally set up for success.
- Effectively implement the land-use policies from the 2024 legislative session
Colorado recently approved a package of land-use policies which, if successfully implemented, will make it easier for Coloradans to live near and utilize transit services. Multiple bills will directly enable the construction of affordable and efficient housing by allowing more urban infill development, including the construction of accessory dwelling units, and allowing high-density housing near existing bus and rail routes (HB24-1007, HB24-1152, HB24-1313, SB24-174). Additionally, the parking reform bill, HB24-1304, will remove minimum parking mandates for new residential developments near transit corridors, incentivizing greater investment and use of multimodal transportation options. These changes to housing policy will help reduce vehicle dependency and help make public transportation more convenient for more Coloradans.
- Increase investment in non-driving infrastructure and services
Now that the groundwork has been laid to develop more convenient and connected communities, Colorado and its local governments should work to increase investments in non-driving infrastructure and services to allow residents to actualize the economic and health benefits of a cleaner multimodal transit system. States that have prioritized mobility options have been better able to recover from the ridership drops and fiscal instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the Washington State enacted the Climate Commitment Act in 2021, which frees $16 billion from its Cap-and-Invest fund for active transportation projects, public transport expansion, and decarbonization efforts, all of which bring the state closer to reaching its vision of having 30% of all trips being taken by active modes. Since its passing, the state has invested over $2 billion into community and transportation projects, many of which have funded bikeways and sidewalks connecting communities to schools and commercial districts, with the state seeing a steady year-over-year increase in public transit use by commuters in the same timeframe.
Codified, specific mode share targets will guide the state and local governments to invest in a transportation future in which Coloradans are less dependent on expensive, polluting, hazardous vehicles in order to meet their day-to-day travel needs. To realize a future in which nearly a fifth of the state’s population can use public transit, bike or walk to meet their needs in the next decade, the state should align its budget and transportation infrastructure priorities with the goals outlined in Governor Polis’ 2035 Transportation Vision.
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