Hilltop Was Promised a Decision on Colorado Boulevard This Summer. It Didn't Come.

On April 29, residents packed a room at Graland Country Day School to hear the Colorado Department of Transportation lay out three ways it might rebuild the boulevard that forms Hilltop's western edge. By the end of the night, an informal show of hands found that of more than 100 people in the room, all but eight wanted no build at all. The Hilltop Neighborhood Association's own recap of the meeting, published the next day, didn't mention that number. It stuck to logistics: three design options, a survey link, and a hopeful note that CDOT expected to name its preferred alternative by summer.

Summer has come and gone. The preferred alternative hasn't.

That gap between what residents said in the room and what the neighborhood's own newsletter reported afterward is worth sitting with, because it says something about how this project is actually moving through Hilltop, separate from whatever CDOT's slide decks say. The road itself isn't going anywhere. But the timeline that residents were told to expect has quietly slipped, and the sentiment in the room was more lopsided than the official record let on.

What's Actually on the Table

Colorado Boulevard runs Hilltop's entire western boundary, the line most people cross to reach Cherry Creek, and CDOT's Bus Rapid Transit study covers a seven-mile stretch of it, from I-70 south to the Southmoor station past Hampden Avenue. At the April meeting, CDOT presented three configurations, each with its own tradeoff between speed and traffic:

• Mixed flow. Buses share existing lanes with cars. CDOT projects this would cut transit travel times by up to 25 percent while adding only about 5 percent to typical vehicle travel time. Estimated cost: roughly $200 million to $250 million.
• Side-running dedicated lanes. Buses get their own lane along the curb, with cars sharing two through lanes. Transit times improve by up to 30 percent, but CDOT's own modeling shows personal vehicle trips could take up to 1.4 times longer. A later public presentation put this option's cost at around $250 million.
• Center-running dedicated lanes. The most expensive option, priced at roughly $350 million at CDOT's May open house, running buses down the middle of the boulevard the way East Colfax's BRT project does.

CDOT is making its case for doing something with real numbers. Colorado Boulevard is part of Denver's High Injury Network, and the corridor recorded 117 crashes resulting in death or serious injury between 2018 and 2022. About a mile of the route has no sidewalk at all, and roughly four more miles fall short of ADA standards. Route 40, the existing bus line along the corridor, already carries close to 3,000 riders a day, and CDOT projects that number could double under BRT, backed by a forecast that the corridor's population will grow 52 percent by 2050.

None of that is in dispute. What's in dispute is whether any of the three options solves it without making Hilltop's side streets the release valve for boulevard traffic, a concern residents raised directly at the meeting and one CDOT said it would study further once a design is chosen.

The Room Didn't Sound Like the Recap

Michael Atkins, the Hilltop Neighborhood Association's vice president, gave the fairest summary of where things actually stand when he told the Denver Gazette in April that the neighborhood agrees the boulevard is old and needs to change, and that the real question is what specifically needs to change about it.

That's a more accurate description of the mood than the association's own meeting recap, which read as procedural: three alternatives, a project timeline, a request to fill out CDOT's survey. The straw poll never appears in it. But it happened, and it lines up with what's been reported at CDOT's citywide open houses too, where residents from Glendale to Lowry have shown up describing the same set of worries: cut-through traffic on residential blocks, years of construction disruption before any benefit arrives, and a comparison every attendee seems to make unprompted, to the East Colfax BRT project, whose construction has been running through the neighborhoods east of downtown for the past year.

The Rest of the Corridor Agrees

Hilltop isn't alone in its skepticism. Glendale, whose roughly one-mile stretch of Colorado Boulevard sits just south of Hilltop between Mississippi and Alameda avenues, held a city council vote in May and came out unanimously against all three of CDOT's alternatives, recommending no build instead. Glendale's city manager pointed to declining vehicle counts on the boulevard over the past two decades as reason to question CDOT's growth projections, and argued that any decision should wait until the Colfax project's actual results are in, not modeled ones.

That same argument resurfaced in late August, when a resident working with a group calling itself Save Colorado Boulevard asked the Lowry United Neighborhoods board to formally request that CDOT pause further planning for two years after the Colfax BRT is fully operational. The logic is straightforward: spend the money to fix Colorado Boulevard based on what Colfax actually did to traffic and ridership, not on assumptions about what it might do.

Denver City Council hasn't taken a formal position on the project. District 5 councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, whose district covers much of the Denver portion of the corridor, has said publicly that CDOT hasn't shown the data to justify the cost of the more expensive alternatives.

Why the Decision Slipped

Here's the part that didn't get announced anywhere, but shows up if you compare CDOT's own materials from earlier this year against what the agency is saying now. In April, Hilltop residents were told CDOT hoped to name its Locally Preferred Alternative by summer 2026, with construction targeted to begin in 2030. CDOT's current project page tells a different story. The alternatives analysis phase now runs through 2027, with the preferred alternative not identified until that year, followed by design work and environmental documentation in 2028. A firm construction start date is no longer listed at all.

That's not a scandal. Federally funded transportation studies slip timelines all the time, and CDOT has said as much, noting the process remains subject to change. But it means the decision Hilltop residents organized around, attended meetings for, and took a straw poll on in April is still a year or more away from being made, not weeks away as the neighborhood was told at the time.

For anyone who walks or drives Colorado Boulevard regularly, that delay buys time, not resolution. The sidewalk gaps are still there. The crash history hasn't changed. And the three-way tradeoff between speed, cost, and traffic disruption is exactly where it was in May, just with a longer runway before Denver has to pick one.

CDOT's project website keeps a running log of meeting materials and survey links, and the Hilltop Neighborhood Association has said it will pass along updates as the Locally Preferred Alternative gets closer to being named. Anyone who wants a say in which of the three options moves forward still has time to weigh in, just not as little time as this spring's meetings suggested.

If you're trying to make sense of how a project like this might touch a specific block in Hilltop, whether you're thinking about future access, resale considerations, or just want a neighbor's read on what's changing along the boulevard, I'm always glad to talk it through. Reach out to Christine Nicholson. Let's Connect.