County planners seek funding for bike shelters, Highway 7 starter bus service and transit planning

Community Planning and Permitting presented transportation-related requests on Oct. 7 asking the Board of County Commissioners to consider projects funded from transportation sales tax and other regional grant matches.

Dale Case, planning staff, said the top request is $625,000 for bike shelters along the SH-119 project corridor to help first/last-mile connections to the bus rapid transit project. Case described the shelters as needed to encourage multimodal use and to provide secure bicycle storage that buses cannot hold.

The county is also being asked to provide a two-year, $200,000 local match for a pilot Highway 7 starter bus service; Case said Boulder County’s share would be $100,000 in 2026 and $100,000 in 2027 against an estimated total pilot cost of about $9.2 million.

Case described staffing and grant-match requests tied to the countywide strategic transit plan and partnerships with community organizations: reallocation of grant-funded transit planner positions to maintain project momentum, $5,200 over two years as a local match to support Community Cycles programming, and $11,350 per year for commuting solutions-led outreach and travel demand management with a stated emphasis on equity and Spanish-speaking communities. Commissioners asked whether the outreach contractors were already selected and whether procurement would allow for community-based partners to do targeted outreach; Case said commuting solutions is the local partner on the request and that staff would follow up with additional details on implementation and procurement.

Case also presented a $50,000 scoping request (spread over two years) for an update to the county’s transportation and mobility plan, to ensure current priorities and racial equity considerations are embedded in future planning work.

The board did not take funding votes; the items were presented for the upcoming budget deliberations and public hearing schedule.