We’ve now done 10 episodes of the podcast in our quest to understand why bike transportation still isn’t possible for most people in most cities. They’ve been pretty high-level conversations about the bike movement broadly. Over the next five episodes, we’re going local. We’re going to try to learn as many things as we can about how the bike movement is doing in cities across America by talking with the folks who know those cities best – the advocates who are trying to make bike transportation a practical reality. We’re starting in Denver, where Bike Streets is based, and my guests on this episode are two advocates whose work I have a lot of admiration for, Jill Locantore, Executive Director of the Denver Streets Partnership and Rob Toftness, co-founder of the Denver Bicycle Lobby.

Avi Stopper (00:01)

Hey everyone, welcome to Bike Networks Now. I'm Avi Stopper, the founder of Bike Streets. Through a series of conversations with leaders in bike transportation, we're trying to answer a question: Why is bike transportation still not possible for most people in American cities? And how can we make it a reality? Despite voter support and billions of dollars of investment, there's no city in America where biking is truly a practical reality for people of all ages and abilities. Why is that? It's 2026. And how can we fix it so anyone can ride to the places they want to go today? These aren't just freewheeling conversations. We're in search of an answer. And our best understanding of that answer is the topic of a book we're writing on how cities can make bike transportation possible today.

Avi Stopper (00:57)

We've now done 10 episodes of the podcast in our quest to better understand why bike transportation still isn't possible for most folks in most cities. These have been pretty high-level conversations about the bike movement broadly. So over the next handful of episodes, we're going super local. We're going to try to learn as much as we possibly can about how the bike movement is doing in cities across America by talking with the folks who know those cities best — the advocates who are trying to make transportation a practical reality for folks every day. We're starting in Denver, where Bike Streets is based. And my guests on this episode are two advocates whose work I have a lot of admiration for. Jill Locantore is the executive director of Denver Streets Partnership, and Rob Toftness is a co-founder of the Denver Bicycle Lobby.

Rob Toftness (01:49)

Thanks for having us.

Jill Locantore (01:50)

Thanks, Avi.

Avi Stopper (01:50)

Okay. So I want to start by probing a little bit on the different roles that different groups play in a rich advocacy ecosystem. And I think that's a cool thing that we have going on in Denver. So Jill, how do you describe Denver Streets Partnership to people who aren't tuned into urbanist stuff? What do you tell someone at a cocktail party who has no idea what any of this is all about?

Jill Locantore (02:17)

My elevator pitch for the uninitiated is we're a grassroots organization trying to make it easier to get around Denver without a car — which means making it easier to walk, or bike, or take transit, or basically do anything other than drive where you're trying to get to on a daily basis.

Avi Stopper (02:33)

I think I once heard that a good elevator pitch is concise and invites a question. And the question is often, "Okay, well, what does that mean? How do you do that?" So how do you answer that second-order question?

Jill Locantore (02:46)

Well, the problem — the reason most people have to drive — is because we've designed our communities in a way that forces them to drive without providing them any real alternative. It's either unsafe or inconvenient or just impractical to try to get around any other way. And so we are advocating for the city to invest money, adopt policies, and change the design of our streets to make it possible for people to choose things other than driving.

Avi Stopper (03:19)

It does seem that one of the big challenges is to invite people to imagine a future that is different from the present, because so much of the present just seems immutable — like this is the way society is organized. It's a really tricky proposition. But do you get the sense that when you talk to people in those initial conversations, they're like, "Wow, it doesn't have to be this way"?

Jill Locantore (03:43)

Lack of imagination is definitely a challenge, especially for people who've never lived or experienced anything other than car-centric communities. Sometimes if you just talk about things like Disney World — think about if you've ever been to Disney World, what did you like about it? It was very walkable and an enjoyable place to stroll around. We could do that in our cities too. We don't have to go to amusement parks to experience that.

Avi Stopper (04:12)

I heard at one point — and we'll get to Mayor Michael Hancock in a moment — that he wasn't really a bike person until the Downtown Denver Partnership took him on a trip to Copenhagen or something like that, and it was eye-opening. So maybe an experience as much as a story tells folks that it doesn't have to be this way.

Rob, over to you. I thought this was just an amazing moment. At the Life After Cars book tour stop in Denver, local television anchor Kyle Clark reported to the crowd a question he'd heard from — as he put it, and I find this term so annoying — the "heavy hitters" in town. And the question was: is the Bicycle Lobby too powerful? So what is the Denver Bicycle Lobby? And be honest — are you too powerful?

Rob Toftness (04:52)

Yes. Of course we are all-powerful and everywhere all at once. We will take every parking spot. But actually, the name is tongue-in-cheek, and that's what we've always enjoyed about it. It came from a Twitter account back in the day that was just called the Bicycle Lobby, and that was kind of their shtick — that they were all-powerful. We became the Denver wing of the Bicycle Lobby. And it's really funny because even in meetings we've now had people say, "Well, we know that you are staffed and well-funded." I'd like to show you the $20 we have in our bank account. But if people think that, I'm not going to correct them — why would we?

Avi Stopper (05:34)

You do have a bank account, yes? There are a couple of things that are, I think, amusingly subversive in the way that you present — one of which is that your various social media handles are @noquish. So what's that all about? And how did you get into this whole thing? What was the experience or set of experiences that got you on this train?

Rob Toftness (05:52)

@noquish was just the state of being I desired — I just didn't want to get hit by a driver when I was going from A to B. I thought that was pretty reasonable. I was actually working in Boulder. I had moved down to Denver and was making that commute. I grew up in Northern Colorado, and we drove a lot — lived out in the county, grew up driving — but I just recognized that I was getting angry as I was doing so. And eventually I found a job closer to home. The one moment I really remember: I got on my bike, strapped a lawn chair to my back, and rode to City Park Jazz from downtown Denver. And it was just kind of like that light-bulb moment — like, holy crap, this was easy. You wind your way through all the cars piled up in the park, and then you get there and it's nice and you enjoy yourself.

And then I started just riding more. I'd go to the grocery store, which was a couple blocks away, and then go a little further, and a little further. And you see paint and you're like, "Hey, this is really cool — they made a space for me." And then you get close to a pass and you go, "Hey, this isn't that great. This could be better." And then you travel a little and you see something else and you go, "Wow." It's just a learning experience as you go along.

Avi Stopper (06:56)

May there be many more who follow that path. Jill, was there any moment you can point to in particular where you were like, "Aha — yes, this is the future I see, this is the work I want to do"?

Jill Locantore (07:23)

Yeah. So I grew up in Colorado Springs, which is a very car-oriented city. And everybody, as soon as they turn 16, is excited to get their driver's license so that they have freedom of mobility. But when I went to graduate school, I moved to Toronto to go to the University of Toronto. And I couldn't figure out how to afford bringing a car with me because I had an enormous amount of student debt from my undergraduate degree — I was living on some tiny little stipend as a research and teaching assistant. And so I sort of blithely made the decision: I'll just leave my car behind and see if I can figure out how to live without a car in Toronto.

The good news is Toronto is a great place to live without a car. It has an amazing public transit system, a fantastic network of little greenways that connect to and from the transit stops, and these really dense, walkable neighborhoods where you have everything you need within 15 minutes — grocery stores, hardware stores. And I realized that happened not by accident, but that somebody at some point had made decisions about how to design the city and what type of infrastructure to invest in that allowed me, as a pretty low-income person, to have a really great quality of life. And I was like, I want to help make those decisions — I want other people to have the option to live in these great communities and not be chained to a car. And that led me into the field of urban planning and eventually into advocacy.

Avi Stopper (09:00)

I really like the framing you led with there — freedom of mobility. And I think that's not necessarily something people are super conscious of, and yet there are all these decisions that were made on our behalf by people who came before us. In Toronto, some of those are beneficial from a standpoint of access and freedom. In places like Denver and other American cities, it's not the case. And I think that at its essence, this is a battle to try to increase the general freedom that people have to go places they want to go and get there the way they want to get there.

When we think about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts in broader advocacy, I see the Denver Bicycle Lobby and Denver Streets Partnership as being a little bit of yin and yang — having a very complementary set of capabilities and roles within the ecosystem. Rob, starting with you: how do you think about what your role is, and how you play off some of the other advocacy work — in particular what the Streets Partnership does?

Rob Toftness (10:04)

Well, first of all, I think we're incredibly lucky in Denver to have the groups that we do. Some cities maybe have just one large organization. We're lucky enough to have Denver Streets Partnership, where, if there's an event that needs chairs and an insurance certificate, we can go to them for that kind of help. And we can also maybe do some things they can't — sneak around and plunk down cones, do some tactical urbanism, be a bit more antagonistic or a bit more nimble. The great thing is, Jill has called us up and said, "Hey, we have this event, can you get people to show up?" And that's one of our superpowers — yes, we can grab people and mobilize them pretty quickly.

Avi Stopper (10:49)

Jill, from your perspective, how do you see the complementary nature of that?

Jill Locantore (10:53)

Yeah. I think advocacy exists on a spectrum — from one end, a fully inside game where advocates are staff who work for the city and want the same outcomes we do, trying to achieve that within the confines of being a city employee; to the other extreme, the bomb-throwers who can be extremely critical and antagonistic toward the city. They have a role too in really pushing the Overton window in a certain direction.

I think Denver Streets Partnership and Denver Bicycle Lobby fall at different points along that spectrum — not at those extremes, but at different places. Denver Streets Partnership tries to always start with a collaborative approach with city officials, maintain good working relationships with staff and elected members of city council and the mayor's office. We will be critical when the time comes for it, but we also try to maintain that professional relationship. Whereas the Denver Bicycle Lobby can be a little more rogue and not always be so concerned about following the rules — which can be really helpful at certain times.

Avi Stopper (12:09)

It is really interesting to think about the advocacy spectrum running the gamut and including folks inside government, because we all know people who work for the local Department of Transportation and Infrastructure who really share the vision of what this city can become. There is always this interesting tension between both building connections and relationships with those folks and also nudging them along.

So, Jill — how do you think about that duality? We'll get to this in a moment in a little more detail, but Denver Streets Partnership gave the current mayor, Mike Johnston, a D on transportation. That's a pretty strong statement. But by the same token, I think you work really carefully and assiduously to create relationships and bridges between your work and the city.

Jill Locantore (13:01)

Yeah. Like I said, it always does start collaboratively, and communication is a really key part of that. We always try to have open communication with our city leaders, and it starts when they're running for office. When Mayor Johnston was running for office, we communicated with him, did a candidate questionnaire to ask him about his stance on these different issues, and then made it very clear that our intention was to hold him accountable to what he said he was going to do as a candidate, and that we were here ready to partner with him to help him achieve those goals.

And then when he started falling short of those goals, we didn't immediately jump to giving him a public bad grade. We started with internal conversations: "We're concerned about the direction things are going." It's when you start seeing those conversations not leading anywhere that you move toward: "Now is the time to be publicly critical." But even then, we gave them a heads-up — "Hey, we're going to release a report card and it's probably not going to give you a good grade, and we just want to make sure you're not caught by surprise so you can be prepared to respond however you see fit." That's part of continuing to maintain the relationship even when you get to the point of publicly criticizing folks.

Avi Stopper (14:28)

Something tells me, Rob, that if DBL were to put out a statement like that, it wouldn't necessarily be run through the mayor's press office.

Rob Toftness (14:35)

No. I like what Jill said earlier about the spectrum, though, because there are folks in DBL who want to start a bike bus, and that's really wholesome. And then there are others who want to submit a CORA request and get people's emails and give them a hard time about what they've said. I do think one thing we've really leveraged pretty hard is the social media side of things. Someone called us professional shit-posters once, which was kind of funny. But it's interesting how it's evolved from being 100% antagonistic to also getting us into meetings — it's not just telling them what they're doing wrong, but also saying, "Hey, here's some improvements we want to see." And slowly that opens the door and all of a sudden you're sitting in a meeting with city engineers. There are a lot of different ways of going about it, and I think that's what's so great about having different organizations — you've got to approach it from every angle in order to get there.

Avi Stopper (15:33)

It is kind of like the full-court press. I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier — neither of you will be surprised that I'm going to spend some time here on tactical urbanism, since I'm kind of obsessed with it.

Rob, you mentioned the fly-by-night types of operations. You did this red cup thing — that was a pretty eye-catching thing for a lot of folks — where you put red solo cups along a miserable painted bike lane on, I think, a mid-size street, just to indicate to folks where there could be actual protection. Can you tell the tale of tactical urbanism in Denver and why it's not something the city does and pursues actively? Because — going back to that point from a moment ago about seeing what the future can be by going on a trip to Toronto or Copenhagen or Portland — there's this incredible power of tactical urbanism to show folks what things can actually be like. What's the story of tactical urbanism from your perspective in Denver?

Jill Locantore (16:31)

Yeah. Denver Streets Partnership and our predecessor organization, Walk Denver, are really rooted in tactical urbanism. That is essentially how we got started as an advocacy organization — looking at a single block and asking: how could this block function differently if it were oriented around people and pedestrians rather than cars? At the time, back in 2012 I think it was, we were the first ones to propose this idea of tactical urbanism to the city. They had never heard of it before, and to their credit they were relatively receptive. So we were actually able to get permits from the city to do in-street demonstrations — if we added a bulb-out at the corner, what would it look like? Or a mini traffic circle? Just using orange cones, painted tires, whatever temporary materials, to demonstrate for one day or a few days how the street could function differently.

And they were extremely effective — both in opening up people's eyes to what was possible, and in collecting data on how it changed behavior and surveys on whether people wanted things to be more permanent. A great example was a pop-up demonstration we did on West Colfax where we actually added a protected bike lane to that busy arterial street. Before the demonstration, we asked people: do you think it would be a good idea to put a bike lane on West Colfax? The vast majority said no. And then during the demonstration event, where people got to experience a planted, protected bike lane, the opposite was true — the majority were like, "Yes, I get it now. This is great. I would love for this to happen." So it was very successful in winning over hearts and minds, helping people understand what's possible, and building community support for more permanent long-term changes.

In the case of West Colfax, we continued our advocacy and went on to secure GO Bond funding for safety and pedestrian improvements on that street — not an actual bike lane, but some of the other improvements we did demonstrate, which are under construction right now.

I think to a certain extent this kind of terrified the city — the success of these tactical urbanism projects — because they were like, "If we allow the community to demonstrate something and they like it, then they're going to expect us to build it." And they were very nervous about creating an expectation they didn't feel they could always follow through on. So they started getting a lot more stingy with permits on those types of demonstration projects, and only allowing them if they already had plans and funding to implement something and we could demonstrate what was going to be built — which kind of defeats the purpose of a demonstration project. That has been super frustrating to see compared to other cities, like Atlanta, that have really embraced this model and actually provide funding and technical assistance to neighborhood groups interested in testing out street designs. It's really a matter of culture and receptivity within the local agency. And at the moment, the culture in Denver leadership is not super appreciative of grassroots, community-led demonstration projects.

Avi Stopper (20:02)

I was thinking as I was preparing for this interview about this story, which I've heard you tell before. And I realized the follow-up question I don't think I've ever asked you is: why do you think this terrifies them? Is it the backlog of new work it creates? Is it that it's outside some master planning document held by the Oracle that says this is the sequence of projects? These things seem like such clear wins for the community. I mean, remember in the Montbello neighborhood, up by the Denver airport, you did a demonstration with a stop sign that shortened the crossing — if memory serves there was a bulb-out — and it made it possible for people to cross from the neighborhood across a kind of gnarly arterial to a park. These seem like such obvious wins. What is it about having these kinds of wins, that can so clearly and qualitatively improve people's lives, that creates consternation within the city?

Rob Toftness (21:05)

I had a really interesting conversation with a city engineer once, and I asked him: "What would happen if you were to violate the MUTCD? Are they sending an army in the middle of the night? Are they going to drag you out of your bed?" And his answer was no — but they could pull funding for it. So even at the local level, I think there's a lot of fear. Part of it is litigation, but even at the structural level, they're worried about losing federal dollars or others. There's this whole framework around the whole thing that has them afraid from the outside as well.

Avi Stopper (21:44)

There are perverse incentives basically set up around it. Jill, I think the things you typically do in those demonstrations are compliant with MUTCD and NACTO standards?

Jill Locantore (21:57)

Yeah, the street designs we've demonstrated are feasible designs that could be implemented without getting crosswise of the MUTCD. Where we do run into that challenge is around the placemaking type of activities — things like street murals and decorative crosswalks. We did a number of decorative crosswalks on Colfax Avenue, got local artists to come up with designs that were very cool, everybody loved them, but those are not compliant with the MUTCD. And especially now under the Trump administration, they seem to have a vendetta against putting art in the street. So the city has stopped allowing those — we were able to get permits for them before, but now we no longer can.

There's definitely a fear of literally painting outside the lines in that regard. And funding in general is a challenge — we all know the city doesn't have nearly enough money to do all the street design changes that even they want to do, that have been identified in their own plans and documents, let alone additional ideas the community is pushing from the bottom up. I think that's part of their concern: we just don't have the capacity and resources to be responsive to all this community-driven demand. And then it's a matter of control — the culture in our Department of Transportation, and probably in others around the country, is that they want top-down control over what happens on city streets, and they get very uncomfortable giving any of that control to community groups.

Avi Stopper (23:42)

The organic nature of it might create consternation. It also occurs to me that this is potentially a way to generate a lot of enthusiasm electorally for additional funding for these types of mechanisms. If people see that these things are possible, and then there is a funding mechanism for them to vote on, that seems like it could be quite compelling — because they understand the city doesn't currently have the money to do these things, they've seen what they look like, they know they make their lives better, and here's an opportunity to vote for that.

Jill, you led an incredible campaign called Denver Deserves Sidewalks, oriented around building a network of walkable sidewalks. Denver basically has a pretty broken sidewalk network. Can you describe the vision behind this audacious effort?

Jill Locantore (24:32)

Yeah. The challenge with sidewalks is that Denver, like most cities in the US, does not actually pay for sidewalk construction or repairs. We use taxpayer dollars to build streets, fill potholes, build out water lines and sewer lines — but for whatever reason, we've always treated sidewalks as a private amenity, leaving it up to the adjacent private property owner to build and maintain them. Which turns out to be a pretty terrible way to actually build a functional network of sidewalks. You end up with patches of concrete in front of this building or that building that don't actually connect you to where you want to go.

So the challenge has always been shifting responsibility for sidewalks from private property owners back to the city, and having a funding mechanism to pay for that. The idea had been kicking around in Denver for more than 20 years — let's start charging property owners a fee that creates a pool of funds to build and maintain sidewalks citywide. But there was just never the political will on city council or in the mayor's office to move forward with it. Politicians often underestimate how much support there is for multimodal transportation. They're kind of subject to the same car-brained propaganda that everybody is — the assumption that that's what the populace wants. So there just wasn't the political will to put this idea to the public.

In Colorado, fortunately, we have the opportunity to do a citizen-initiated ballot measure. If you gather enough petition signatures as citizens, you can get something on the ballot. And that's eventually how we were able to move this idea forward — a citizen-initiated measure that proposed a fee to fund the build-out of sidewalks, and people voted yes on it. So whether the city wants to or not, they are now responsible for building out a complete network of sidewalks in Denver.

Avi Stopper (26:37)

I stand in awe of your ability to navigate the complexities of that process. I just find it so difficult to map these things and say, okay, this is what we need to do exactly at this moment, and this is how we're going to do it, and the next step is this. So kudos to you for making that happen.

One quick follow-up: I was in New York City recently and I saw this fairly astonishing rebalancing of the right-of-way. Manhattan in particular is pretty wild. This one idea really struck me — you have tons of people walking on the sidewalks along the avenues, and in many cases they not only have protected bike lanes, but they've also taken part of the avenue itself and basically designated it as additional, quote-unquote, sidewalk space. In terms of how we think about sidewalks and accelerating the sidewalk rollout here, have out-of-the-box ideas like that been considered? We have some really unnecessarily wide streets.

Jill Locantore (27:45)

I mean, in some sense that's a form of tactical urbanism, right? If you don't have the funding available to widen the sidewalks — which can be stupidly expensive, because it starts involving stormwater management if you actually have to move the curb or change the crown of the street — a low-cost alternative could be: we just leave the curb where it is, but we commandeer existing street space and say this is for pedestrians. Until someday you have enough money to widen the sidewalk.

And if you're thinking really long-term, there's a fantastic article in a magazine called Aeon — A-E-O-N — titled "The End of Sidewalks." It makes the argument that we didn't used to need sidewalks because pedestrians were allowed to wander in the street and there weren't cars to run them over. It was the introduction of cars that forced pedestrians off to the side — literally — and we had to create a walkway that was a safe space for pedestrians. But if we can put cars back in their place and not allow them to be the dominant species overruling all of our public right-of-way, there's less of a need for sidewalks. That's a long way off — the utopia state where pedestrians rule over cars on every street. But I think we can start gradually reclaiming some streets where we're like, yeah, we allow cars into this space, but pedestrians really are the dominant users, and they're allowed to use the whole space without needing a designated sidewalk to be there.

Avi Stopper (29:30)

Of course, the king of all tactical urbanism demonstration projects — at least in my book — is Times Square. It's just fascinating to see how that has returned to what you would originally expect a public square to be. People are milling about, taking in entertainment and the sights. It's fascinating to think that these things, in some cases, have started to come full circle.

So let's turn from pedestrian activity to biking. Rob, if you were giving a state of the city address on biking — and the Denver Bicycle Lobby does designate a bicycle mayor each year, so maybe there should be a state of the city address, grand with major pomp and circumstance — chalk it up. How would you describe the current state of affairs of biking in Denver?

Rob Toftness (30:17)

I like that idea.

Rob Toftness (30:27)

I haven't recently gone and visited family elsewhere, and when you do, you always come back and realize — I do like to say this — that Denver actually is doing better than a lot of places. But when you're here and you peek behind the curtain and you're deep in the weeds for a long time, it starts to seem really dire. So on the positive side, there's a lot of really good stuff in Denver. But no doubt you also have plenty of opportunities to be in a bike lane and then end up in the middle of 8th Avenue feeling like you're going to die. There's tons of stuff in Denver that's still subpar, and we could do so much better. And I think that's the fuel for advocates — yes, we have nice stuff, but we can still do better.

Denver had a lot of really great momentum there for a while. And I think what's so disappointing right now is we have just killed it. Some of it is through straight-up incompetence and buffoonery — I don't have a better term for it. We could have just kept that momentum, and we chose not to. That's what's so frustrating about Denver right now.

Avi Stopper (31:29)

What folks should know is that there was a pretty significant mayoral transition. The previous mayor, Michael Hancock, at some point somehow came around and became a very supportive guy. A central plank in his third and final mayoral campaign was famously 125 miles of bike lanes — in what, five years I guess, even though it's a four-year term. I'm curious how you guys feel about that 125 miles. It's probably not a binary answer, but generally speaking, Jill — do you feel like that was successful?

Jill Locantore (32:07)

You know, in retrospect, I have more positive feelings about the mayor's commitment and how it was implemented than I did at the time. I have to say, People for Bikes deserves credit for incentivizing the mayor to make that commitment — they basically dangled in front of not just our mayor, but several different cities around the country: if you make this commitment to building out a significant number of bike lanes within a certain period of time, we will help support you by investing millions of dollars in marketing campaigns and public relations to help build community support for the bike lanes. And that's what got Mayor Hancock to commit. And I think just getting him to make that public commitment and really pressuring him to follow through on it is exactly why we did get a lot of new infrastructure in Denver in the last five years.

We grumbled a lot while they were building the infrastructure because we weren't super happy with the quality — we felt like it didn't quite live up to its potential of being truly high-comfort for people of all ages and abilities. We weren't super thrilled with the marketing and campaigning that was happening alongside it. But in retrospect, we did see a lot of street design changes happen during that period in Denver. It significantly expanded the bike network. No, it's not perfect. It's not high-comfort in all areas. There are gaps in connectivity. But we've seen this with your Bike Streets map — there are now a lot more routes that feel comfortable as a bicyclist in Denver than there were previously. And it is specifically because he chose this one thing to champion.

And I think that's what we're lacking with our current mayor — he has not chosen any particular thing related to transportation to champion. And so it's kind of languishing now.

Avi Stopper (34:03)

Yeah. Rob, what's your take on this?

Rob Toftness (34:14)

Yeah, I definitely agree. I think one of the key things about Hancock was — I mean, he got on a bicycle in spandex. It looked kind of goofy. He wasn't a natural bike champion. But he stayed out of the way. He said, "I want to do these bike lanes — go do them," and instructed his staff accordingly. And I remember seeing an interview where someone asked him about parking. And he didn't talk about parking. He just said, "We've made a commitment to Vision Zero and this is how we have to go about it." Again, he wasn't always the biggest bike champion, but he made a decision and he followed through on it. I have to give him that credit.

Avi Stopper (34:52)

I remember having a conversation with a pretty senior DOTI staff member who was deeply involved in a lot of the 125 miles work. The level of enthusiasm and passion he had for his work at that moment — it was as if we were putting a man on the moon. Just the level of morale was incredibly impressive. And I currently feel, in my conversations with folks, that there's a general sense of deflation. It's really interesting — having not experienced a mayoral transition before — to see how it can just stop the music on stuff like this. It's been jarring and strange.

We did a lot of work, as you know, to get our VAMOS initiative quote-unquote adopted by various city council candidates and the mayor himself. And I'm curious, as you reflect on the work during the election — Jill, you referenced a moment ago the survey you sent to mayoral candidates; the Mike Johnston survey that the Denver Bicycle Lobby had him fill out is on the homepage, I think symbolically, of the Bicycle Lobby's website. As you think about that work to understand who these folks were and what their platforms were really about, are there things you feel like you've learned where it's like, "Next time I'm not going to do that"?

Jill Locantore (36:31)

Well, I'm definitely really grateful that we did the candidate surveys while people were running for mayor, so we did have something to hold this mayor accountable to. He said this, but he did that — and we can highlight that gap. In doing so, it gives us very clear talking points that allow us to generate news coverage and engage our broader coalition of people in getting upset about the current state of affairs, and point to ways the mayor can course correct.

I think what I would do differently with future candidates is: just because they answer questions in a certain way, don't be confident that they're actually going to follow through. Bring more skepticism from the beginning of their administration. Maybe be a little more vigilant, assuming they're going to fail and therefore need to be continually pressured and educated to follow through on those commitments. Because the fact is that candidate Johnston said a lot of the right things, but we've come to realize that was probably written by campaign staffers and didn't necessarily reflect his level of understanding or commitment to these issues. Being skeptical, even when politicians say the right thing — it's great that politicians are learning to say the right thing on transportation, but we still need to be skeptical that it means they're going to follow through.

Avi Stopper (37:58)

I'm struck, looking back on it, that he knew the right language. He was able to speak in the coded language that people have come to look for if you're tuned into this. As an illustration — in that aforementioned questionnaire that the Bicycle Lobby has on the website, his first line is: "As mayor, I will work to create a connected network of high-comfort bike trails that connect our entire city, making it easier for people to get around on bike, and increase public transit usage and convenience so more and more people can take public transit and use bikes and micromobility as their last-mile solution." Rob, you're nodding as if you have that memorized word for word. Same question to you — what lessons have you learned?

Rob Toftness (38:43)

Well, it's like — yeah, it's almost like if he had access to ChatGPT at the time, that's what it would have spat out.

Avi Stopper (38:52)

Yeah, although at that point it was just talk-like-a-pirate ChatGPT, but anyhow.

Rob Toftness (38:57)

Yeah, exactly. For me, it would be vetting what they say against their past record. And that was part of the problem with Johnston — I don't know that there were a lot of transportation decisions for us to look at from his past. But there are upcoming candidates whose past behavior we do know, and I think we should definitely hold that against them. And there are others — I've seen a recent candidate website for someone where I know it was written by a staffer, because these buzzwords have gotten more popular as e-bikes came to Denver and people got on bikes and took notice. I think candidates were like, "Well, this is a part of the platform I've got to speak to."

I think instead of just asking "Do you support bike lanes?", you say, "What's the favorite bike lane you've been on in Denver? Prove to me you know what you're talking about."

Avi Stopper (39:42)

Right, and when they say MLK, you're like, "Yeah, no — I'm calling bullshit on you."

Rob Toftness (39:43)

Exactly. "I really love the Cherry Creek Trail. And only the Cherry Creek Trail." It's like, cool — have you ever left it? But really, I think we need to interrogate the knowledge, go a little deeper, because they can obviously parrot the buzzwords now. So tell me your favorite journey on a bike. Or the first question of this podcast — what was your aha moment? If they can tell me that convincingly, then I know they're not making things up.

Avi Stopper (40:10)

So Rob, one of the things I really admire about your work is — literally, I feel like you are often carrying around a copy of the city's bike master plan. And you're like, "What should we do? Here, it's in the document. It has been approved by city council. You want to know what to do? Go to page 37."

Rob Toftness (40:21)

Yes. The Denver Moves Everyone document was a big lift. And it's also frustrating to me because we're always talking about how much input we needed — and we had 10,000, 12,000 respondents to that thing. It has been vetted by Denverites. It's what they want. And the city agreed to a Vision Zero program in 2017. So we've done this over and over, and we've agreed to things. And now we have this document that was described to us as an umbrella document for our desires and priorities in transportation in Denver. We don't need to do it again. I should be able to walk up to any city council member and say, "Here it is. What part of this are we doing this year?" And that's what's so frustrating — they sometimes are so surprised: "Oh, you actually wanted us to do that?" Yes. Yes I do. Here it is. I'll print it out again and bring it to your office.

Avi Stopper (41:26)

I wonder how many times you've actually printed that out — dozens, I would imagine.

Rob Toftness (41:32)

I have spent a fair amount at FedEx Print & Ship.

Avi Stopper (41:35)

We're recording this a week after tax week. And when I think about the fact that we still have not created this reality — the literal cash that the government is pulling out of our bank accounts at this moment — it hasn't been used in the way that we say we want it. And for me, this is personal. I reflect on my kids, who are going to graduate high school without the ability to really ride their bikes all over the community. And that really pisses me off, candidly. It's just like, how long are we going to keep doing this?

So one of the things I have long wondered is how you feel the bike master plan really becomes, in practical terms, a complete network. How do we go from where we are to where we want to be — where we have this really great network that works well for people of all ages and abilities — when so many components are so complicated and need to be built independently, the process takes five years, and then, as in the case on West 29th, it's ready to go and then gets dramatically watered down to way less than what we were promised? What needs to happen to actually get this thing done?

Jill Locantore (42:56)

I mean, you used the word "process," and I think that's where there's a lot of opportunity for improvement. Our approach to transportation planning and engineering is very informed by highways — that's what we've been good at building as a country. And when you build a highway that costs a billion dollars, you do want to spend many years studying it and doing detailed engineering plans to make sure it's safe and durable. And then, because we had a habit of building highways through low-income communities, we started putting in all these checks and balances to add community planning and consultation to the process. But what we ended up with was this very bureaucratic, consultant-heavy, years-long process for building infrastructure that makes zero sense when you're applying it to sidewalks and bike lanes and traffic-calming treatments.

We don't need to spend 10 years doing engineering studies and extensive community surveying to put in a mini traffic circle. Just build the mini traffic circle — and instead of spending a ton of money doing planning and community surveying before you build it, do that afterward: make sure the traffic circle works the way it's supposed to. Are people actually slowing down? Are you seeing a reduction in crashes at that intersection? And if it's not working the way it's supposed to, go back and iterate, because it was so cheap and quick to build in the first place. It's not going to take another 10 years to fix. So I think that's where we need to see a lot of improvement — have a process that matches what we're actually trying to build today, not one rooted in our habit of building highways.

Avi Stopper (44:48)

I've never actually heard the idea framed that way — that this incredibly costly, protracted approach is sort of a derivative of the poorly-informed approach to highway construction of the past. A lot of the work that the three of us in our respective spheres have been doing is oriented around exactly this process stuff.

The younger cohort of folks within departments of transportation see this and see the opportunity, but ultimately there's a really substantial organizational culture issue they're running up against. Have you thought about how we can provide more cover for that? Maybe it's just giving us the freedom to do tactical urbanism, so people can actually see on the ground what these things look like and become believers in the possibility that their streets are going to get better. What do you think is the real work to get Denver in particular to improve its processes?

Jill Locantore (45:48)

Well, you used an important word: "giving cover." That's what we do for the city officials who are moving swiftly to implement projects and taking an iterative approach. And the real challenge is that people love to complain, but if you're neutral or fine about something — or even if you're happy about something — you're much less likely to reach out to your elected official and say, "Hey, I'm totally fine with this new traffic circle you added to my neighborhood." That really is our role: rallying people to come out and say "yes" and "thank you," and countering the naysayers who are inherently motivated to be the loudest voice in the room.

Rob Toftness (46:36)

That actually brings up another side of the advocacy thing. DBL — yes, sometimes we're there to be riled up and maybe a little antagonistic. But part of our goal was also to get people to show up to those public meetings that only the cranks show up to on a Wednesday evening. My mind was blown when I heard that city council, one time, received six emails in opposition and none in support. And I was like, that's what you based your decision on?

So sometimes you need to send that email that says, "Hey, I rode this bike lane. It was really great." Or, "I took my kid to school," or "I got some groceries." And I have to remind myself to do that. But every once in a while I've written an email and said, "I was on the Blake Street bike lane and it reminded me how great it was." Or you have someone start a bike bus, and they invite city council members and the mayor to come ride it — sharing those positive things is really valuable. Administrations turn over, but people don't. And someone who has an e-bike might be there through multiple administrations, having a better experience, and that can carry on into advocacy later. So really, showing up and saying "this is something I want" or "this was something positive" — that's just as much a part of it as saying, "Hey, you guys screwed up and need to do better."

Avi Stopper (47:56)

Thanking them when they do good work. Gosh, it's almost as if these civil servants are real people with emotions.

Rob Toftness (48:03)

Well, so many of them that every one of us here has met — you see them around town on their bikes, you know, dogfooding, riding in the lanes, and they want to do it too. They're caught up in the machine as well. I've told the story to the guy who engineered the Blake and Market lanes: I used to ride in the middle of Blake, just middle of the street, and my partner wouldn't come with me. And now we'll go out to dinner and we're using that lane. I told him that story, and I know it really meant something to him. That's really cool to be able to share.

Avi Stopper (48:35)

Testimonials — we need more and more of them. The bike bus phenomenon is such an incredible, vivid set of testimonials, because the storytelling it produces, the imagery — it is truly the essence of joy, of freedom, of kids who represent innocence and the future being out there just enjoying the right-of-way the way we all hope it will be enjoyed someday.

All right. So, lightning round to wrap up: a couple of hard-won lessons. And maybe we did a little bit of this a moment ago, but Jill, starting with you — a couple of lessons about advocacy that are your North Star.

Jill Locantore (49:19)

Well, I think an important lesson for the mobility advocacy community in particular — since we are relatively young as an advocacy movement — is to learn from those who came before us advocating for things like civil rights: the arc of change is pretty long. And when you're trying to change systems and culture, which is exactly what we're trying to do, it's going to take time and there are going to be setbacks. So it's important to learn to be patient and take that long view — even when you have setbacks, that doesn't mean you've totally lost and should take your toys and go home. Imagine if back in the 1960s, when people first encountered opposition to the idea that women and people of color should have the same rights as white men, they had just given up because they didn't win immediately. We can make really big wins and really big changes over time. It does take persistence, there are going to be setbacks, and that's okay. We need to take time to mourn and recover from those setbacks — but keep going. We are going to see change happen over time, just like civil rights advocates of the past did.

Avi Stopper (50:33)

We lick our wounds and we go to the urbanist happy hour. Rob, how about you? Hard-won lessons.

Rob Toftness (50:39)

Something that DBL has shown me is that a lot of folks think, "Hey, I want to make some change. Maybe I'm going to start a group. Maybe I'm going to register an LLC or make a nonprofit, or build all this stuff up front." And quite frankly, just put it out on social media that you're going to meet at a brewery somewhere, see if any bike people show up, and just start — little tiny steps, do things. It's really easy to get discouraged and be like, "Well, I can't do that, I don't know how to get that permit or whatever." But take the really small step first and find a group of like-minded people. And then you're going to find in that group someone who does know that thing — someone who wants to start a bike bus, or someone who wants to issue CORA requests. You're not doing it all alone. Instead of trying to front-load all the work and set it all in place and organize it all up front, just go do it. Go to a brewery or coffee shop, invite bike people, and see what happens.

Avi Stopper (51:31)

I love that — a bias for action. It's what we seek from the cities themselves. So guys, thanks so much for the conversation, for your collaboration, lo these many years. Go and make things better around here.

Rob Toftness (51:36)

Excellent. Thanks, Avi.

Jill Locantore (51:43)

Cheers to that.

Avi Stopper (51:44)

Thanks for listening. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for guests you'd like to hear from, drop us a line at [email protected]. Bike Networks Now is a production of Bike Streets. Anyone should be able to ride a bike to any destination in their city today. You can learn more about our work at bikestreets.com.