Boulder transportation board unanimously backs Folsom Street safety plan, urges council approval

The Transportation Advisory Board on June 9 recommended that Boulder City Council approve the Folsom Street Safety Improvements Project community and environmental assessment process (SEAP) and its recommended design, voting unanimously 4 to 0. The board’s recommendation follows a multi‑year effort to apply Vision Zero and the city’s Core Arterial Network (CAN) priorities to Folsom Street from Pine Street to Colorado Avenue, a corridor the project team described as seeing heavy multimodal use and a history of crashes. Melanie Sloan, principal project manager in the city’s Transportation and Mobility Department, told the board the recommended design “repurposes space where feasible on this physically constrained corridor to provide safety and urban design improvements” while preserving business access and street trees. The nut graf: City staff recommended a blended design (largely based on the project’s Alternative C) that adds on‑street protected bike lanes for most of the corridor, widens sidewalks, provides floating bus stops, preserves or replants 100% of existing street trees, and adds protected intersections and raised crossings at several high‑crash locations. The board’s affirmative recommendation sends the SEAP and recommended design to City Council, which is scheduled to review the item as a call‑up on Aug. 7; if called up, council will hold a public hearing on Aug. 21. Most important facts first: City staff reported 218 crashes on Folsom Street between 2019 and 2023, averaging about one crash per week, with seven crashes resulting in…