Last week, I got the email that had been a long time coming: Colorado Springs was killing its Citizens Transportation Advisory Board (CTAB), one of the many boards and commissions that allow regular people to advise City Council on legislation and policy. This was a group of 11 volunteers from across town, plus alternates like myself, who were passionate about transportation and moving people around, whether by car, bike, bus, foot or … ya know, those e-scooter things.
With transportation being such an important component of a large, sprawling city like ours, the death of CTAB may come across as Colorado Springs shooting itself in the foot, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
When CTAB was created in 2002, it wasn’t just focused on personal use and residential infrastructure, it also considered land development and business applications.
But 2002 was a different time. Back then, our City Council was both the legislative and executive branches of city government. They could gather feedback, write the laws, then tell the city manager under their employ to execute them.
Following our City’s decision to move to the “strong mayor” form of government in 2010 and separate the legislative and executive branches, City Council has been left with less authority and even less power to execute it.
About a year ago, City Council came to CTAB and explained that we were one of several boards on the chopping block as our responsibilities were considered redundant with other boards and council staff were being spread too thin. In their recent email to CTAB board members confirming its fate, the City said it has a lot of other ways to gather feedback about transportation needs.
While that may be true, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Literally.
About me: I’m a passionate pedestrian. People in Village Seven tell me all the time that they’ve seen me walking around the neighborhood. I take the bus regularly and cycle sometimes, so it was a dream to be interviewed for and accept a position on CTAB in 2022.
Unfortunately, through lived experience I know that the only decent transportation experience the City guarantees is for those driving cars. Every new development features road access and parking for motorists, but none are required to be within walking distance of a bus stop. No new development is required to provide safe, dedicated lanes for cyclists or be within reasonable distance of amenities for pedestrians, a mandate of any world-class city.
It goes beyond infrastructure or policy: it becomes psychological. Municipal negligence creates second order effects like car dependency, the creation of food and medical deserts, and the promotion of road rage among increasingly impatient drivers. We live in a city where motorists publicly justify their sloppy disregard for the safety of others on social media because it’s what misguided municipal planning allows people to believe. Give drivers enough wide, straight roads, place homes and destinations further and further away from each other, introduce bigger vehicles with more distracting infotainment systems, and it’s not hard to see how traffic crashes, fatalities and other bad behavior is elevated by our unmitigated sprawl and mono-modal transit mindset.
Understanding this complicated problem is something that the volunteer members of CTAB do well. We live it, we think about it all the time. While the city gladly shells out for consultants to collate and summarize the thousands of data points they gather, the volunteers of CTAB can give leadership the 30,000-foot gut check for free.
CTAB is disappearing because its effectiveness now falls under the mayor where there is no equivalent body. Baffingly, aside from the occasional photo op with PikeRide, Mayor Yemi has expressed little interest in improving transportation, like expanding bus access, creating a complete bicycle network or providing great pedestrian experiences.
For those who live here, transportation is a top-of-mind concern – whether it’s our ill-maintained infrastructure or the terrible behavior of those who use it – and yet the mayor remains silent. During his six-stop community tour last year, transportation was a mere blip to his other administrative priorities. And yet effective transportation networks not only entwine with all of those objectives, they also promote economic growth, one of his policy polestars.
The fact that our “Olympic City” boasts about its outdoor amenities and athletic economy, but doesn’t feature a decent active transportation network is ironic. That a city our size and population doesn’t have an effective public transit network is tragic.
We cannot be a world-class city without effective transportation management and good urban planning working hand-in-hand. We cannot continue to let the free market dictate the shape and modality of our city. Losing CTAB, its institutional knowledge and its confident ability to speak truth to power is how our city will continue to move in the wrong direction.
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Nick Raven is a Colorado Springs fanboy, community activist and transit advocate. He’s also the host and producer of the Badly Needed & Long Overdue podcast.
