The winding road to rapid transit
Issue No. 165 — Back to the future of buses ☼ A shop where print still matters ☼ What happened “After Anne”?
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Good morning, Colorado Sunday friends!
I am a broken Boulder County record, complaining now for decades (literally) that the long promised rail service that back in the day would have sped me from relatively near my home to relatively near my office in downtown Denver never arrived. For 10 years I’ve groused that the Bus Rapid Transit service offered by RTD along U.S. 36 instead is no substitute for a weatherproof ride on the rails.
But after reading Michael Booth’s cover story this week, I may be coming around. BRT links are being created along busy corridors in Denver and Boulder County that might make it easier and more convenient to ride the bus. And as Colorado’s transportation boss explained, it’s just one piece of a comprehensive strategy to make ditching the car worth it in terms of both time and money.
Editor
The Cover Story
Mass transit is the question. Is a mass of buses the answer?
Public transportation is hard.
Something with an engine, usually big, preferably cheap, is meant to move everyone, everywhere — from the suits-and-skirts commuting crowds, to students on low budgets, to people using wheelchairs or bikes, to third-shift crews at midnight who don’t own a car.
And while city planners must map out a transit future of concrete and steel in 20-year increments, the culture around us turns on a dime.
A sleek commuter train system sits lonely as millennials decide office work is a drag. At the tipping point of electric everything, the world’s richest man tells the new president to stop paying for electric vehicles. At $2.75 for a three-hour fare, a warm bus serves as affordable housing for a homeless person, whose presence may in turn scare off other paying riders.
Perhaps it takes a new generation of planners to pivot from past failures. Thirty years after RTD opened its now-sprawling, though sparsely-traveled, light rail system, the agency has taken on the city of Denver and CDOT as partners in a new venture: Back to the future of bus travel.
Bus Rapid Transit will bloom on the Front Range on the theory that it’s not that people hate buses — what they really want, and will use if presented, is more buses, more often, on the busiest routes.
The challenge is daunting. RTD’s ridership has fallen by 41 million riders a year, from 106 million pre-pandemic. They’ve got to try something. So we asked what they’re thinking.
READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
Michael Booth | Reporter
The Colorado Lens
Our interests in Colorado are nothing if not diverse. There is proof in some of our favorite images this week.
Eric Lubbers | CTO & Newsletter Wrangler
Flavor of the Week
Bold designs that Matter
There is nothing subtle about Matter and that’s just the way they like it. The company’s design studio and letterpress building is drenched in bright colors and bold designs, “we are here” and “all are welcome” printed above the front door. Three doors down is the Shop at Matter, a bookshop, stationary store and event space, which, taken together with the studio, make up the company’s “non-binary, pluralistic and unruly” business model, as owner and graphic designer, Rick Griffith, describes it.
At first, the bookshop and letterpress were separate entities — the letterpress and studio have been around since 1999, the bookshop opened around 2007. They stocked the bookshop with some of Matter’s original stationery alongside “books and tools that changed our lives,” Griffith said. That ended up being mainly books about music, design and philosophy, but not Plato’s “Republic” philosophy, Griffith clarified. Judith Butler, W.E.B. Du Bois, Noam Chomsky.
Over the years their bookshop community grew and became more integrated with the letterpress, attending workshops and events that merged the two businesses. By 2020, the Shop had a pretty steady following, one that was only boosted when Oprah Daily included Matter on its list of Black-owned bookshops around the country (one of only two in Colorado — the other was, controversially, Tattered Cover).
I was personally drawn into the store a few months ago looking for a notebook by a Japanese stationary company, and Matter happens to be the only place in Colorado that carries the brand. That I went in for a slim, black pocket planner, is, in retrospect, an incongruous purchase from one of the most colorful shops in downtown Denver. Though I had my purchase pre-planned, I ended up spending nearly an hour in the small shop, drinking in freshly pressed designs from down the block and thumbing through coffee table books about Sister Mary Corita, protest graphics and B-Movie Posters.
Somehow the shop feels both carefully, meticulously curated, and DIY to boot. It’s a punk ethos with a graphic designer’s aesthetics that Griffith continues to evolve as the Matter community grows and shifts. I just hope they keep selling my favorite silky stationary.
Parker Yamasaki | Reporter
SunLit: Sneak Peek
In “After Anne,” author L.M. Montgomery begins her famous novel
EXCERPT: While “Anne of Green Gables” has long been a literary staple, and spun off into film and television, author Logan Steiner not only loved the book — she soon felt compelled to add her own story of Lucy Maud Montgomery, both her rise to literary fame and the events that transpired “After Anne.” In this excerpt from her historical novel, Steiner describes a writer on the cusp of attempting her first full-length novel, and foreshadows the arrival of the man she would later marry.
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Steiner has always felt drawn to creative types, so when she learned about the complicated story of Maud Montgomery, it wasn’t long until she committed to a historical novel exploring the author’s life. Here’s a slice from her Q&A:
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
Logan Steiner: …Learning about Maud’s life story for the first time late one night in bed, I got chills. I had to know: Who was this woman who edited even her private journals for later publication? What drove her to develop such life-affirming characters but to write at the end of her life, “My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it”?
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH LOGAN STEINER
LISTEN TO A PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR
Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
???? One month after Election Day and the vote counting, and recounting, is finally over in statehouse races. Jesse Paul reports that those last races have resulted in the Democrats missing their goal of a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers.
????Democratic leadership in the state Senate last week told Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis that she is no longer eligible for legislative aides paid for with state money after yet another employment misconduct complaint was filed against her. Jesse Paul reports the punishment is highly unusual.
???? Most of us know that research into gila monster venom led to the development of popular weight loss drugs. But what can we learn from the amazing hearts of pythons and how might that research influence treatments for cardiac disease? John Ingold visited a lab at the University of Colorado to find out.
???? Colorado’s three largest oil and gas operations found out that consultants submitted doctored data from tests of soil, groundwater and organic contaminants, including readings on benzene, total petroleum hydrocarbons and elements such as arsenic and barium, at 350 well sites in Weld County. Civitas, Occidental Petroleum and Chevron are livid, Mark Jaffe reports. And state regulators say the fraud deserves a criminal investigation.
???? The U.S. General Accountablity Office in July released stunning data showing that about a quarter of U.S. college students are regularly missing meals or eating less than they should. Dan England found out the stats are even worse at Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado, which are ramping up programs to help students focus on their studies rather than where their next meal is coming from.
???? Talks over the future of the Colorado River got spicy during the annual Colorado River Water Users Association meeting Thursday. Shannon Mullane had a ringside seat as barbs were tossed during the confab in Las Vegas.
???? A network of 200 people has coalesed into a potentially powerful advocacy group pressuring for change to local and federal policies they say keep their adult kids churning in a broken mental health care system. Jennifer Brown caught up with some of the Mad Moms to find out what motivates them.
???? A power plant that ran its turbines by burning shredded beetle-killed trees removed during wildfire mitigation seemed like a good idea at the time. But the Eagle Valley Clean Energy Biomass Plant never was profitable. The shuttered plant is about to be sold and U.S. Forest Service bosses told Jason Blevins they’re very worried about impact on work to reduce fire risks in our forests.
???? Beer may be the foundation of Colorado’s extremely robust fermented beverage culture, but Gabe Toth has some insight into the hard ciders of the past, and how the apples they were made from are informing a surge of contemporary quaffs.
Dana Coffield | Editor
Thanks for spending time with us today. We appreciate all that you’ve done this year to keep the wheels of The Colorado Sun turning. If you’re up for helping us shine a little more brightly in the new year, Colorado Gives Day is Tuesday and donations made right now go further thanks to a $5K matching grant from the Colorado Media Project and a $1M+ statewide incentive fund. Your gift will give us an extra boost that will help our team continue bringing Colorado the news it needs in 2025!
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
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