Ella from Centennial writes, “What’s driving you crazy? What is with the strange, mile long bike lane on a part of Clinton Street north of Dry Creek? It just seems so out of place and has an open lane to the right. Can you drive in that little lane or not and why build a bike lane so short?”
When you look at it right now, it does look out of place, but Arapahoe County and the City of Centennial hope that it won’t seem so out of place when the bike lane is extended south to the Inverness Resort and north into the business park.
The Arapahoe County portion of the project is called the Inverness Drive West Transportation Improvement project. The stated goal is to make it safer and more convenient to travel by bicycle or walk along the north-south corridor of Inverness Drive West and Clinton Street. According to Arapahoe County, the six-foot-wide bike lane with a two-foot-wide buffer area will run along both sides of Inverness Drive West from the Inverness Resort driveway on the south to the intersection of Clinton Street and Fulton Street just to the north of Dry Creek Road. Where the bike lane seemingly ends to nowhere on the north side of the project at Maggiano’s Little Italy, the City of Centennial will come in with the “right sizing” project that will transform several roads east of Interstate 25 and north of Dry Creek.
Part of the work north of Dry Creek will include a ten-foot wide, multi-use path added on the east side of Clinton Street between Dry Creek and Fulton. Arapahoe County said that the multi-use path will be separated from the street by a landscape buffer and that this path will complete segments where the on-street bike lane will not be constructed, like through the new roundabouts. Segments of the existing meandering sidewalk will remain, but much will be replaced with that new path.
MORE: Read more traffic issues driving people crazy
The bike lane and larger path are not the only change coming to this part of Inverness. Three new roundabouts will be added along Inverness Drive West near the northern UCHealth driveway, Inverness Lane West and the Fleming’s/Catholic Health Initiatives driveways. Arapahoe County said, these new roundabouts will provide a safer alternative to traditional left turns during peak traffic and reduce vehicle speeds. Traffic engineers said, they recorded the average driver speed at 37 mph. I can vouch for that, seeing drivers routinely go well over the 25 mph posted limit.
The project will also add new lighting along both sides of Inverness Drive West between Dry Creek and the Inverness Resort, improve the drainage, add new landscaping, enhance the signage, and near the end of the project, repave much of the roadway south of Dry Creek.
This reconfiguration of Clinton and Inverness Drive is just one of several changes to the streets in this part of Centennial. There was a roadway study done in 2018 by the Denver South Transportation Management Association. They called it the North-South Regional Bicycle Corridors Study where they identified additional desired roadway changes on the multiple roads in the generally commercial/industrial area north of Dry Creek and between I-25 and Havana. If you have ever driven on these roads, you know they are wide and fairly free of traffic. I would take my teen daughter here often to learn how to drive because it is so quiet. That 2018 study put into writing what we already know, many of these roadways have a high level of excess vehicle capacity. What the City of Centennial is doing is going through what they call a “right sizing” process on these streets to utilize the space for bike lanes.
The concept on Clinton includes both buffered bike lanes and a parking lane north of Maggiano’s that will be created near My Neighbor Felix Restaurant and the ViewHouse. There will also be buffered bike lanes on Easter Avenue and on Geddes east of Clinton as well as on Fulton north of Clinton. The city told me, leaders anticipate installing new pedestrian activated rapid flashing beacons and associated crosswalks across Clinton at Easter Avenue and Easter Lane later this year.
Centennial told me, the striping modification work to transform the remaining streets in this area was put out to bid and they are moving forward through the contracting process now and anticipate the striping to be completed in a few months.
The City of Centennial told me, as with any change to an existing roadway, leaders anticipate a certain learning curve but believe the end result will be worth it.
Arapahoe County said the change along Inverness Drive is the first of several projects planned at providing more regional cycling opportunities and connections between Denver and Lone Tree.
Denver7 Traffic Expert Jayson Luber says he has been covering Denver-metro traffic since Ben-Hur was driving a chariot. (We believe the actual number is over 25 years.) He's obsessed with letting viewers know what's happening on their drive and the best way to avoid the problems that spring up. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or listen to his award winning Driving You Crazy podcast on any podcast app including iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Podbean, or YouTube.
